She Rises
by Paradisical815
Summary: Gotham didn't go down without a fight; a rebellion is quashed before it could really begin and Bane takes the young leader captive as punishment and to warn those who would follow in her footsteps. But some battles must be lost before they can truly be won and the road to destiny can be as twisted as the path to redemption. Bane/OC.
1. The Taken

_**She Rises**_ **by Agape Love**

**Summary: The people of Gotham did not go down without a fight. Two weeks after the city is sacked, a girl is taken captive by Bane as punishment for trying leading a rebellion and as a warning to others who would follow in her footsteps. But some battles are lost before they can be won and the road to destiny can be as twisted as the path to redemption. Eventual Bane/OC.  
**

**Rating: M for disturbing content, language, and sexual content.  
**

**Trigger Warnings: Recreational abuse of prescription drugs, psychological manipulation, intense fight scenes, murder, unhealthy sexual situations/relationships. I also feel the need to mention that there will be frank discussion and depiction of rape, sexual abuse, and the aftermath of sexual abuse. This is not a major component but I don't want anyone to read something that might be triggering.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or any of the characters associated with the franchise. I do not own any of the song lyrics/poems/quotes featured at the beginning of each chapter. I own the plot to this story and any original characters. THIS IS THE DISCLAIMER FOR ALL CHAPTERS.**

* * *

_It's a thief in the night_  
_To come and grab you_  
_It can creep up inside you_  
_And consume you_  
_A disease of the mind_  
_It can control you_  
_I feel like a monster_

**Chapter One: The Taken**

She didn't tremble. She didn't even flinch. She was tiny, barely reaching his chest, and chubby, and generally unimpressive and unthreatening but she tilted her chin up and met his gaze without fear, which was no small thing to do.

_Impressive._

He stopped in front of her and the others in the line held their collective breath, hoping he took her so they could go home. The girl's eyes were wide and pretty and a violent shade of blue; she had strange lips. Strange because they were slightly asymmetrical, strange because they were full and soft and set in a hard line.

She was afraid; he could feel it pouring off of her. But she refused to show it; she was refusing him his power. The other captured women in the line refused to look at him, hoping he'd pass them by, not wanting to anger him, but this one, not the youngest or the oldest, not the prettiest or the ugliest, met his gaze with a quiet kind of defiance.

"What is your name?" he asked her, his filtered voice echoing around the abandoned church. There was a moment of total quiet before she answered.

"Kathryn."

Her voice wasn't what he'd expected. It was sharp, a little raspy, and toneless, and it sounded wrong coming out of such a soft mouth.

"How did these people find you?"

He knew the power of his voice; he knew it was unsettling. They expected a growl and instead got a strange, lilting accent wrapped in a sound like thunder.

"She was fighting us," came a hard male voice from behind Bane before the girl could speak. Her eyes flashed past him with a surprising speed. "Organizing a mutiny down by the old docks."

"Mutinies are on ships," snapped the girl suddenly, leaning around Bane to glare at the man who'd spoken. "I was organizing a _rebellion_, get your facts straight if you're gonna accuse me of something."

And then, to everyone's surprise, Bane began to laugh.

"She is right about that. And what a rebellion it was- doused before the spark even took form. How proud you must be."

She said nothing but her eyes burned.

He bent down so that their eyes were on the same level and he studied her. She was coiled tighter than a spring, her hands clenched at her side, pupils dilated and the vein in her neck pulsing.

"What did you think you would achieve?" he asked softly, his accent lilting and clipped at the same time. "Surely you knew success was impossible."

"Sometimes," she said, and her voice was not loud but it carried and reverberated in the building and he knew her words would echo in every ear, "it's about more than success."

"You wished to set an example."

She said nothing and he straightened up.

"I would be honored to grant your wish."

And abruptly he turned his back on her, striding out of the church to where a motorcycle was waiting.

"Bring her."

000

They bound her wrists and threw her on a motorcycle. She glared at one of them, a tall and thin man who had the look of a junkie. He gave her a grin that would have looked at home on a rat and stroked the nozzle of his gun.

"If you expect me to drive this thing with my wrists bound, you're stupider than you look."

She did not feel brave but there were different types of fear, too, and right now, the fear pulsing through her was a lot like insanity.

He leaned over and exhaled in her face. His breath reeked of onions and garlic and she winced. "Best get all that spunk out now, girly. Ain't gonna have it for much longer."

She spat in his face before she realized what she was doing. His face spasmed and he drew a hand back before punching her in the cheek, sending her to the ground. It had started to snow.

Her head was spinning and she tasted blood in her mouth. It'd hurt, but it wasn't a very good punch.

She slowly rose to her feet, unsteady without the use of her hands, and gave the man a smile. "Stick to your guns, rat tails, you punch like a five year old."

His face contorted again and he tried to get to her around the bike but she planted her hands on the seat and vaulted herself over the bike, her bound hands twisting on the leather, and kicked him in the head. He went sprawling.

"And seriously, brush your damn teeth."

He climbed to his feet, glaring at her and hoisting the gun at her. She raised an eyebrow.

"Really? Going to shoot an unarmed college student? That's real manly, real brave-"

"If you pull that trigger, it will be the last thing you do."

Bane's voice made her body clench. It came from behind her and it was mechanical and intellectual and the verbal equivalent of a lion stalking prey. It sounded like a history book, if history books were made of thunder as well as blood.

"She attacked me."

Bane stood beside her. Her skin crawled. He had a strange scent to him, almost chemical, like hospitals and smoke.

"An unarmed girl a foot shorter than yourself? It must have been quite the fight."

His face flushed and he gave her a last glare, one she met with a particular vehemence of her own.

"Regardless," continued Bane, his voice a calm, mechanical threat, "I have claimed her. She is not to be harmed. Leave, now."

He left and Bane looked down at her. She met his gaze as solidly as she could.

"Claimed?" was all she said. It was hard to read his face with the mask, but something behind his eyes tightened.

"Yes. Get on the bike."

She climbed on gracelessly. He swung a leg over the seat and sat behind her, his arms on either side of her to grip the handlebars. She tried to make herself as small as possibly to avoid touching him but his arms were like steel bars on either side of her and his chest pressed against her back. She felt the strange, rigid material of the bulletproof vest he wore and the fear in her body rose like a wave.

_Five seconds, _she told herself as the bike roared to life, his arms moving on either side of her. _Five seconds to be afraid._

000

He took her to an apartment complex filled with his men and his women and they took what had to be one of the most awkward elevator rides in history. He'd steered her through the crowds in the million dollar foyer, a big hand on her shoulder, not for her benefit, but to broadcast the message to the others- _this one is mine._ His hand had dropped as soon as they stepped inside the elevator and they stood in silence. Kathryn's wrists were sore and beginning to chafe thanks to the rope that bound them, but she ignored it. She was cold as well, wearing only a long sleeved shirt, jeans and boots, but she ignored that too. She tried to think, to plan-

They rose past the twentieth floor.

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to know what he was going to do to her, what exactly it meant to be claimed by a masked, mass murderer, she wanted to know when she would die; when they would all die- but she said nothing. She let the questions scream inside her head; in the safety of her own mind she cursed and screamed and shouted but outwardly, she made no sound. She was so scared she felt as though her skin was vibrating.

They reached the thirtieth floor and the elevator dinged. The doors slid open.

"Out you go," said Bane, and with halting steps, she stepped into the lion's den.

He followed her and she felt the doors close. The apartment was once incredibly expensive but now sparse, almost bare; somehow it didn't surprise her that Bane seemed little for interior decorating. There was an old couch and a big kitchen, both of which looked unused _(how the hell does he eat? _she wondered suddenly) and an organized pile of weapons on the table. She could see a hallway leading out of the living room that led to a bedroom, she assumed. The walls were lined with windows.

"Nice place," she said loudly. If she was going to die- and she had no option to assume otherwise- then she was going to make herself as obnoxious as possible.

He said nothing.

"I thought you were big on the communal living thing. Share it all, spread the wealth, what's yours is all of ours, right? You got a bunk mate?"

"Yes," he said, turning to look at her, an almost amused look in his eyes. "You."

Something icy filled her veins. Outside the window, the snow was coming down harder.

"Are you going to rape me?" she asked, and was glad that her voice did not shake and that she sounded almost disinterested. His eyes didn't change but something did, something in the air between them shifted and she knew what his answer would be before the words left his mask.

"No."

And then he was reaching for her- he took her wrists, pulled a knife from his belt and cut through the bindings. She pulled her hands back as quickly as possible, disliking his touch. She rubbed her wrists. He moved back to the elevator without looking at her.

The doors slid open.

"Do not try to escape."

**TO BE CONTINUED**

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"Disturbia" by Rihanna**  
**

A/N: First and foremost- this story will contain fairly to pretty damn major spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEE IT LOOK AT YOUR LIFE LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES BECAUSE THAT MOVIE IS RIDICULOUS.

A little bit of history- my friends and I write all the time together. We have a list of prompts and we trade stories, and I was given this one and holy it has it developed a life of its own. So, yes, this IS a self insert story. Why? It's fun. If that bothers you, turn back now.

I hope you like the story! Would love to hear what you think!

Paradisical


	2. Devils

_**She Rises **_**by Agape Love**

* * *

_Holy water cannot help you now_  
_Thousand armies couldn't keep me out_  
_I don't want your money_  
_I don't want your crown_  
_See I've come to burn your kingdom down_

_Holy water cannot help you now_  
_See I've come to burn your kingdom down_  
_And no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out_  
_I'm gonna raise the stakes, I'm gonna smoke you out_

**Chapter Two: Devils**

She sat on that old couch for a long time, staring out the windows at the falling snow and at the buildings that used to mean 'home'. She cried a little, before pushing her tears away with the heels of her hands and returning to staring and thinking and planning. She'd explored the apartment and it had yielded little information of use. There were two bedrooms; one was unused. The other looked like the rest of the apartment; there were signs that it had once been luxurious and ornate, but now it was bare and almost militant. There was a bed that looked hardly slept in, bottles of pills with names she didn't recognize and an old book on the nightstand. She'd grabbed the book and flipped through it- it was in Arabic. She'd taken a few semesters of the language in college, she tried to read it, but gave up and now she sat and she stared and she prayed.

_Nothing to do but wait._

The elevator doors dinged and she had jumped to her feet before she realized what she was doing. The doors slid open to reveal a worn looking woman in her forties who had a duffel bag slung over her shoulder along with a gun. The two women eyed each other for a moment before the older one stepped out of the elevator.

"Bane says this is for you," she grunted, swinging the duffel off her shoulder and dropping it onto the floor with a loud clunk. Kathryn eyed it.

"Don't turn your nose up at it, kiddo. There's food and clothes and shampoo. It's a hell of a lot more than some of the other guys got theirs."

"Am I a pet?" Kathryn snapped, anger helping her to sound tougher than she felt. The woman laughed, her eyes crinkling in a way that made her face look surprisingly good natured.

"That's a good way to put it. Better Bane's than one of the other ones', though. He's big and mean but he's got a code of his own. He won't hurt ya 'less you give him a reason to."

Kathryn said nothing. The woman eyed her before sighing.

"It ain't that bad, kid. You got a warm bed, food, and all ya got to do is-"

"- is whatever he says," Kathryn finished. The woman shrugged.

"That's the long and short of it."

"I'd rather be out in the cold," Katty said flatly. The woman shrugged.

"Have it your way. But it'll be easier if you just give him what he wants."

Katty said nothing and the woman left.

She took a shower with the shampoo and soap he'd brought her and she shaved her legs for the first time since Gotham had been shut off from the rest of the world. She'd had better things to do than worry about how smooth her legs were, what with trying to organize a rebellion, but she wasn't one to waste an opportunity, either.

She never considered taking the razor to her wrists.

Once she was clean and dry she pulled the clothes out of the bag. He'd gotten her a few pairs and jeans and shirts along with underwear and a bra. There was nothing fancy; it was all highly practical and the lack of anything kinky gave her hope that she'd come through this unraped.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and one of the t-shirts that was dark blue before going back to the couch. There was nothing in the apartment to do, nothing to read and no paper or pencils that she could use to draw on. There was the book on Bane's nightstand that she could keep trying to translate, but something told her he might not take kindly to her nicking his stuff.

So she folded her legs underneath her on the couch and laid down. For a long time she didn't sleep and instead stared with open eyes at the elevator doors.

000

Bane came back at two in the morning, stumbling, the valves on his mask loose and his hands covered in blood.

"Girl," he said, leaning on the counter. His voice was tight and wild at the same time, all tainted by that mechanical tone. "Girl, get up- come here-"

She awoke suddenly, sitting bolt upright and then she stared at him.

"What-"

"Come to me."

She climbed slowly off the couch and walked over to him even more slowly; she had the air of someone who was treading water with an injured shark.

"I need- need you to-"

But she was a smart girl and she could do the math. She saw how his movements were tightened, she saw the tensing of muscles and the way his brows were furrowed, and she saw the loose valves. She'd seen enough pain in the last few weeks to knew what that meant and she stared at him, calculating and thinking, wondering if he was incapacitated enough to give her a shot at overpowering him. She realized, very quickly, that he wasn't; animals in pain were always more fierce. And anyway, if she could get him to trust her now, things would be easier from here on out and give her a better chance at sabotage later.

"Do I just screw it back in?"

His eyes met hers and he gave a slow nod. Gingerly she touched the first valve and began to turn it. There was a sudden soft thrumming through the valve as it reconnected to the mask. She did the next valve, and then the next, and when she was done, Bane rose to his feet, towering over her, and looked down at her with something unreadable in his eyes. She stared at his stomach.

"I think you got shot."

"Stabbed. That problem I can handle without your assistance."

"Don't you need stitches or something?"

For a few moments he said nothing. Then-

"Have you ever sown flesh back together, girl?"

The way he said it was a challenge more than it was an insult or an endearment and she forced herself to meet his eyes. It was easier in the dark, when his eyes were all she could see and his mask blended with the night.

"Um, no-"

"As I said. I am capable. A room is ready for you, down the hall and to the right. Good night."

And, without another word, he turned and disappeared down the hallway.

She stared after him and then followed a moment later, turning right when he turned left. She shut the door behind herself and locked it and then collapsed onto the bed without a second thought. She was asleep within seconds and did not dream.

000

She awoke to the sound of voices.

Since the sacking of Gotham (and even before that, really, since the Joker eight years ago) she'd started waking up very quickly. There was no transitional phase; one second she was asleep and the next she was awake and alert.

This held true now; her eyes flew open and she stared at the ceiling and listened. Bane's voice was immediately recognizable, mechanical and yet somehow so raw, and there was another voice, softer and smoother, tainted by an exotic touch. It was a woman's voice.

Silently, Katty climbed out of her bed and moved to the door, listening intently. She was good at people, she always had been, and in the murmur of those voices she heard a bond, some sort of shared history.

Her brow furrowed.

Very quickly she checked her reflection in what remained of a mirror in the vanity across from her bed. She arranged her features into a look of sleepy stupidity, messed up her hair so she'd look like she'd slept harder than she actually had, took a deep breath and opened the door.

The voices became clearer as she moved down the hallway. They were talking about another person, someone with a foreign name, and it almost sounded like Bane was reassuring the woman. Somehow, that was hard to imagine.

She moved from the hallway into the light of the living room and Bane saw her first. His eyes didn't change but his straightened up, slowly. He and the woman were sitting at the kitchen table, turned into each other, their heads close.

Katty observed from behind the mask of sleep.

"Need food," she muttered, moving to the cabinet.

Bane's eyes moved from her to the woman and back again; the woman turned around and faced Katty with a small smile on her face. For a moment, Katty's mask of stupidity was broken.

Everyone knew Miranda Tate's face.

But then she blinked and she was an idiot again.

"Hello," said Miranda Tate, not unkindly. Bane was watching her and Katty realized that he was in love with her, or as in love as a person like him could be. She filed that information away in her mind, in the same place as she'd stored the Arabic book and the pain pills and the scar on the base of his head.

"So, you two know each other?"

Miranda Tate looked back at the masked man.

"Yes," said Bane, his voice a rumble and a threat. Katty nodded.

"Okay."

She grabbed a banana from the cabinet, raised it at the two of them in a mock salute, and disappeared into the hallway, where she pressed herself against the wall and listened.

"She's the leader?"

"She was."

"What are your plans for her?"

There was a moment of silence. Katty held her breath. Then-

"I am going to make an example of her."

There was quiet again and the only sound was Bane's breathing. Then she heard two chairs scraping against the floor and Miranda's voice.

"Whatever you do with her, do it well. There are rumors everywhere, and some people are very angry. There are drawings of bats- a little hope deepens the pain, but too much will cause us problems."

"Be safe."

She gave a low laugh. "Don't worry, my friend. I play the captive very well."

And then Katty heard the elevator doors slide open and close. She leaned against the wall, took a bite out of her banana and waited as Bane's footsteps moved closer to her.

He was a dark silhouette against the light that filled the room behind him and he looked down on her, his eyes expressionless.

"Your girlfriend's cute," she said easily, and with no change of expression on his face, he punched her in the stomach.

**TO BE CONTINUED**

* * *

"Seven Devils" by Florence and The Machine

A/N: oh my GOSH YOU GUYS ARE SO AWESOME, I WAS TOTALLY NOT EXPECTING THIS RESPONSE! I'm glad yall are enjoying this as much as I am, haha. You guys rock.

So I'm pretty sure I know where this story is going, so now it's just a matter of getting there. I really don't know how long it'll be or any of that, but I imagine updates will be fairly regular at least for a while because it's summer and i seriously have nothing to do. Keep the feedback coming IT MAKES ME HAPPY AND HAPPINESS MAKES ME CREATIVE AND YOU GUYS ARE SO AWESOME

love,

AL


	3. Lessons

_**She Rises **_**by Agape Love**

**TRIGGER WARNING: From this point in the story, there will be recreational use of prescription painkillers.**

* * *

_That I might be a part of this,_  
_Ripple on water from a lonesome drip,_  
_A fallen tree that witnessed me,_  
_Him alone, him and me._

_And that life itself could not aspire,_  
_To have someone be so admired,_  
_I threw creation to my kin,_  
_With a silence broken by a whispered wind._

_All of this can be broken,_  
_All of this can be broken,_  
_Hold your devil by his spoke and spin him to the ground._

_Root to root and tip to tip,_  
_I look at him my country drip,_  
_Leathered up by all his fears,_  
_But someone brought you close to tears._

**Chapter Three: Lessons**

She stumbled backwards, doubling over as pain exploded through her torso. He was no Rat Tails; his punch carried power.

Pain made her angry and anger made her stupid; out of pure instinct, she lashed back out at him, planting her feet and swinging her fist at his ribcage. He caught her fist easily in one big hand and twisted it slightly. It didn't break but it did hurt and she hissed, twisting her body to lessen the pressure.

"How do you expect to lead a revolution when you can't even fight the man you want to defeat?"

She swung her leg at his thigh and he blocked it with her own arm. That burned with pain, too.

"Ass_hole_," she spat, and she couldn't be sure, but he seemed to be smiling.

"Anger won't win your battles for you, girl, you have to _learn_! Try to hit me again and this time, do it right."

He let go of her fist and she glared at him.

She was so angry.

She was angry that he thought he had the rights to her city; she was angry because people had died, good, innocent people; she was angry because that first night she'd had to kill a man who tried to rape her little sister; she was angry because she'd failed to save her city from this man; she was angry that he'd taken her and that he was now smiling down at her, teaching her how to fight.

She took a deep breath.

_You don't have five seconds._

"You going to tell me what _right _is?"

"You're a smart girl, surely you can figure it out."

He sounded almost gleeful.

She planted her feet again and swung at him, hard, aiming for the place on his stomach where she'd seen blood last night, and he caught her fist again.

"Wrong," he said, and with a tiny movement he'd knocked her legs out from underneath her and sent her sprawling on the ground.

"Up," he shouted through the mask, turning away from where she lay, shrugging out of his coat. She watched his muscles shift underneath the black shirt he wore, she saw that scar rising and then disappearing underneath the mask. She climbed to her feet and he turned back to face her.

He was _enjoying _this.

Anger was cold but it boiled and her teeth were chattering with it. She was flexing her hands, making fists and then stretching her fingers. Bane stood and he waited.

"Well?" he said, and she hated him, she hated every inch of him, she hated his voice and his mask and his eyes and she'd never wanted a gun or a knife or a goddamn sharpened pencil in her hands as badly as she did in that second.

She swung her leg this time, anticipating him grabbing her foot- and he did. He twisted and she jumped, twisting her body through the air and aiming her left foot at his head. He jerked back and pulled her down with him and they landed on the floor with a solid thud and he'd cushioned the fall for her and _she hated him_. Katty jerked her leg out of his grasp and tried to punch him where the stab wound was but he grabbed both of her fists and he laughed at her. She struggled to free herself but he grasped her hands tighter, the threat clear- he could break her hands in a second and it would be no more difficult that tearing a sheet of paper.

"Improvement already!" he said, his mechanical tone a mocking parody of glee and pride. "Imagine what you could become-"

"I don't want to play-" she started fighting again, squirming, trying to free herself, her voice rising to a shout, "- your _fucking games!"_

And he began to laugh. She was on top of him but he was in complete control; he laughed and he rose to his feet and he pulled her up with him.

"My dear girl, what makes you think this is a _game?"_

"Let me _go-"_ she jerked her arms back and he let her go this time and she stumbled backwards. She stood there, panting, glaring at him.

She wanted to scream at him, tell him she hated him and that he was a monster. She wanted to tear this apartment to pieces and she wanted to _shoot_, to _kill-_

But she couldn't. Not yet.

_Five seconds._

Instead, she drew in a breath and closed her eyes.

_Five seconds._

When she opened them, she was in control. Her anger had not faded but she had pushed it down so that it no longer consumed her; she pushed it out of the way and retook control.

She said nothing and for a few moments they just looked at each other.

"You are a brave girl," he said. It was not a compliment and it was not an insult; it was an observation.

_And you're a monster._

He turned his back on her.

"Don't get into trouble while I'm gone. I'm beginning to grow attached to you."

His tone was amused and mocking.

"You're going to leave me here, all day, with nothing to do but stare at the wall and wait for you to get back so I can fix you and then get my ass beat for it? That's real nice."

He paused.

"I'll bring you a toy, little girl."

Mocking.

And then he stepped into the elevator, leaving her alone with her anger and her bruises.

000

The couch was very quickly becoming her habitat. It wasn't as old as she'd first thought, but the leather was distressed to make it look antique. It was comfortable, too, firm and smooth. There was a closet in the hallway filled with blankets and pillows (and bags of white power underneath a fake floorboard) and she'd taken one of both and was now curled up like a cat, staring out the window.

Her body ached and she was so, so angry. She wouldn't have believed she was possible of this much anger three months ago and yet here she was, lying on a couch in a murder's apartment.

She _hated _him.

It was a child's anger mixed with an almost otherworldly fury. It burned and it boiled and she wanted nothing more than to kill him for what he'd done.

And there was nothing to do except for sit on the stupid couch and stare out the stupid window, so her anger bred and spread inside her until she threatened to burst with it.

The elevator doors slid open. Katty did not move.

"You look awful."

It was the same woman as yesterday, and she was carrying another bag. Well, actually, she was dragging it; it scraped along the ground behind her as she stepped out of the elevator. She was grinning at Katty and Katty stared flatly back at her.

"A present from Bane." She slid the bag across the floor to Katty and then moved back towards the elevator. She stopped as the doors slid open and turned back to look at the unmoving girl.

"My name's Dev, by the way."

There were a few seconds of silence.

"Call me Katty."

The son of a bitch had gotten her books. Good books, too; thick, heavy ones, the only kind she read because she burned through books like a fire. There were some academic texts, mostly on space; there were thick historical mysteries and somehow there was the fourth Harry Potter book.

He'd gotten her a sketchbook and pens and pencils, erasers and markers; there were three canvases and a pack of oil paints, unopened. There were brushes and turpentine. There was an iPad, cracked in the upper right corner, with what looked like drops of blood on the screen. It worked, though, and it was filled with music and apps and movies and eBooks.

There was a bottle of Oxycodone, filled to the top with little white tablets. She popped one into her mouth without hesitation.

And then she pulled out a stuffed animal. It was a little cat, somewhat ratty from use, soft, with wide plastic eyes.

Katty looked at the cat and she swore the cat looked back.

She began to sob. She cried for a long time and she crushed the soft little cat to her chest and she shook and heaved, tears pouring down her face.

For a long time, she only said-

"_I can't."_

She cried herself out and the tears left her feeling raw, like she'd been scrubbed clean from the inside out. The tears had drained her, leaving little room for anything but a quiet sort of exhaustion. Her anger had faded for the moment; she knew it would be back. The crying and the drugs had done their work; a kind of calm was spreading through her, an almost pleasant feeling.

She pulled out the sketchbook, a pencil and an eraser, and she started to draw. She drew a massive, hulking figure with a spider covering his face; she drew bats with human eyes; she drew an illumination in the sky; she drew guns and shaking hands and she wrote the word "fuck" over and over until she tore through the paper. She drew her best friends, the four of them, golden when they were together, now scattered to the winds. She didn't know where they were. She knew they were alive, she knew that they hadn't been captured. Bane would have told her if they had. She drew them laughing and smiling, the Golden Four, and she drew them bitter and hard with guns at their sides.

She couldn't remember when the former had become the latter, but she wasn't the laughing, joking girl anymore. Maybe she could be, again, one day. But there was no place in her new world for laughter.

She drew until her hand was stained gray. The sky was beginning to grow dark outside and still she drew. She drew until darkness had completely fallen and she drew until her eyes hurt from straining to see the paper; when she could no longer see at all, she turned on a light and continued.

She drew until the elevator doors slid open and Bane sauntered out, his hands grasping the lapels of his coat. He looked over at her.

"I'm glad to see you enjoy your gifts. A mind well occupied is more content-"

"I swear to God, do not finish that sentence."

Apparently, Oxycodone made her almost as stupid as anger.

"Or what?" His mechanical voice was highly amused and his eyes crinkled up to inform her that under the horrible thing that functioned as his face, he was smiling. "You'll _beat_ me into submission, like you did this morning?"

She said nothing and clutched the pencil tightly.

_If I could get a clear shot at his throat-_

And, as if he knew what she was thinking, he shrugged out of his coat, set it over the counter and turned to her, his arms spread wide. There was no doubt about it; he was grinning at her. His eyes were grayish blue, the color of tunnels or frozen rivers.

"Here is your shot, my dear."

His voice crawled over her skin like a living thing, sticking and sliding and catching. She watched him and slowly set down the sketchbook. She knew what this was; the same sort of sick "lesson" as it had been in the morning. She knew she couldn't be able to kill him, she seriously doubted she'd even be able to touch him.

But she launched herself at him anyway.

He laughed as he turned away from her, forcing her to skid to a stop and whirl around to face him. He raised his arms back up, his eyebrows lifting in a very clear challenge.

She flew at him again and this time he grabbed her wrist and pulled her in close, pinned her to him, one arm across her chest, and he had grabbed her right wrist and steered her hand to the hollow at the base of her throat and the tip of the pencil rested there. Pain blossomed at the point and she ground her teeth.

"You must learn to use your opponent's body against them." His voice was right in her ear. She could hear the quiet mechanical his under his words; she felt the cool metal of the mask just barely brushing her cheek. "Watch their patterns; learn their movements. They could become your greatest weapon. Again."

He flicked his wrist and spun her away from him, almost like they were just partners and this was just a dance.

She glowered at him. She could fight and hold her own against a normal man; she knew she could. She'd laid a man out on his back with her hands bound, hadn't she? But Bane wasn't a normal man and she felt like a child; a stupid, clumsy child who had no hope of saving her friends or her family or her city.

"No," she said, her voice shaking. Bane raised an eyebrow.

"You have no choice, my dear."

She threw the pencil at him. He caught it easily and tossed it back to her, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Again," he said.

**TO BE CONTINUED**

* * *

"Devil's Spoke" by Laura Marling

A/N: You guys seriously rock. Your reviews make my day, I love hearing what you think! If you have any concrit, I'd love to hear that too.

Also. This story will get sort of dark. Not super super dark because I can't handle writing it, but I'm definitely going to be exploring some pretty intense themes. It is Batman after all, and while this story will ultimately be about redemption, it will also be about the path one takes to get there.

Love,

AL


	4. The People's Court of Gotham

_**She Rises **_**by Agape Love**

* * *

_Tears on the mausoleum floor  
Blood stains the coliseum doors_

_Human beings in a mob_  
_What's a mob to a king?_  
_What's a king to a god?_  
_What's a god to a non-believer?_

**Chapter Four: The People's Court of Gotham**_  
_

He didn't let her stop even when the sun began to rise outside. Every bone in her body ached and new bruises were beginning to blossom all over her body, mainly on her arms and stomach. Her attacks grew more and more feeble as she grew more and more tired but he was inhuman; he mocked her and deflected every potential blow like it was a gust of wind. It might as well have been. He did not grow tired. He offered no sympathy or pity. He mocked her, and laughed at her, and goaded her. She hated him but she was too tired to feel it with any sort of fire.

"Again," he said as the sky lightened. She was bent double, a hand on her burning ribcage. She tried to summon the energy to glower at him but as she could barely stand, it probably wasn't a very powerful look.

"Please."

"Again."

"I don't want to."

He bent forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes a mocking parody of sympathy. "Did I ask what you wanted?"

"Please." Her voice was a whisper.

Bane's was cold.

"Again."

She slowly straightened herself up, glancing out the window at the breaking dawn and she thought about Gotham's ex-white night.

_It's dawn, Harvey Dent. It better get brighter really damn soon._

She put no effort into the punches she swung at him and they had the effect she'd expected; none. She didn't have the energy to care.

After fifteen more minutes, Bane gave her an appraising look. She stood still, slouched over, her ribs burning, too tired to be afraid, and let him look at her. She met his gaze evenly.

He pulled his coat on.

"You have two hours to sleep. You will be coming with me today. You should see this… brave new world."

She closed her eyes.

"Fine."

000

Of course he didn't simply shake her shoulder or call her name; that would be too kind. Instead she awoke to utter panic and the sensation of the world tipping and then she landed with a thud on the expensive, smooth hardwood floor, tangled haphazardly in blankets and her own limbs.

"What," she growled, tears of rage, pain an exhaustion prickling behind her eyes, "the _fuck."_

His voice sounded above her and of course it was amused.

"Time for the day to begin, little girl."

She glared at his boots and the place where hit boots turned into cargo pants that weren't gray or brown or green but a place in between. And then she flicked her eyes up at him. He towered above her, his big arms hanging at his sides, looking down at her, his eyes dark above the mask.

_I hate you_, she thought.

"Are you gonna help me up?" she spat.

Wordlessly, he offered a hand. She grabbed it and pulled herself to her feet, releasing her grip on his hand as soon as she had her footing. She walked past him into the bathroom, grabbed the toothbrush and toothpaste and started brushing her teeth with a startling ferocity. Bane stood in the doorway, his arms across his chest, and watched her.

"What," she spat around the toothbrush, "you never see anyone brush their teeth before?"

"Not one of them has matched your level of intensity." His voice was amused.

_Yeah, they probably weren't living with a homicidal maniac._

She spat into the sink and stuck her mouth under the faucet, taking in a few large gulps of water before turning back to Bane, pushing the back of her hand across her mouth. He raised an eyebrow.

"Lead the way."

000

The building was mostly empty. There were a few guards stationed around the lobby, holding their guns with grim looks on their faces, but Bane's and Katty's footsteps echoes around the massive, gilded and glinting space. Katty counted the guards and all the doors and made a mental map. One of the guards nodded at her. It was Dev. Katty nodded back.

A gust of icy wind hit Katty like a very cold brick wall when the left the warm of the building and she winced, suddenly envying Bane's thick coat. All she had was her thin long sleeved t-shirt and the heat her own body supplied. She hugged herself. Bane gave her a glance that she couldn't read and said nothing. There was a motorcycle waiting by the curb and he gestured to it.

"After you," he said. Katty swung a leg over the bike and wrapped her arms more closely around herself as Bane climbed on behind her. She stiffed as his arms reached around her to grasp the handlebars and then the bike roared to life, vibrating underneath her. They began to move and the wind rushed past her, howling and screeching like a living thing, the cold worming under her skin and wrapping around her bones.

Bane was warm at her back. She, instinctively, wanted to lean back into him, to seek the warmth; but she equally wanted to lean forward and put as much distance between them as possible.

She made her decision in a heartbeat and leaned forward, away from him; away from warmth.

They were driving to the city courthouse. Katty'd never been inside it before but she knew the way it looked; they all did. The drive was not long but when they pulled up in front of the courthouse she was shaking and her teeth were chattering.

The streets were empty. She'd lived in Gotham for twenty years and she'd never sent the streets this empty, not even once, not even at three in the morning on a Tuesday.

The bike slowed and sputtered to a stop and Katty climbed off after Bane, her legs feeling shaky and numb and her hands red from the cold. She glanced up at him and he nodded at the massive old building. Wordlessly they climbed the step together and he pushed open the ornate double doors. Warmth flowed out to meet them.

She was so tired.

The courtroom was filled with people but there was no order to it. The room was swollen with shouts that echoed and twisted around the room; the people were lining the side in haphazard rows. In the middle of the room there was a single chair, and all the way in the back-

Katty froze. "No," she said, without realizing it. She knew what this was. Bane gave her a surprisingly gentle push and she took halting steps into the room. There was someone in the chair. A woman, an old woman- Katty could only see the back of her head but she could tell that the woman was crying. At the back of the room, there was a massive pile of books, and at the top sat a pale, thin, handsome man with dark hair in glasses who looked like he hadn't shaved in a while. His face was vaguely familiar.

"Go, girl," said Bane. They joined the mass of bodies and Katty stared at the woman in the chair. She could see a sliver of her face and she realized, suddenly, who she was.

"No," she said again, more urgently.

"Lana Shanport, you are called here by the People's Court of Gotham for the sentence you must pay in return for crimes against the people." The man on top of the books had a low voice, smooth and almost bored.

"I-I-"

"No one cares what you have to say, _Lana_, your guilt has already been determined. This is just a sentencing. Death or exile?"

Katty whirled around to look at Bane. "Do you know who that is?"

He raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

"She's from an old family, she inherited, like- five billion dollars when she was twenty seven." Katty was talking very fast. "The first thing she did was give four billion dollars to charities and- social- social programs and things like that, she started shelters for homeless people, and fund to help people with medical bills, and abuse shelters, and safe homes for gays who were being threatened a-and attacked- she's _good."_

Bane said nothing.

"Who decides their guilt?" Her voice was shaking.

"The people," he said, as though it was obvious, both eyebrows lifting.

"What people?" Katty hissed. "Because that woman has helped everyone in the room-"

Bane gestured to her. She was crying, her thin shoulders shaking.

"You are more than welcome to defend her."

Later, Katty would swear that her heart stopped.

"Would it do any good?" she asked him, very quietly. The stare he gave her was unreadable. His eyes were very gray.

"It might," he said, his mechanical voice slow, "no one has been foolish enough to attempt it. The defender will share the accused's fate, you see."

Katty stared at him and then slowly turned to the open space between the crowds and the crying woman. A new kind of fear rose in her stomach.

_You've always wanted to be a hero_, she told herself. _Be one now._

"Death or exile?" the man was shouting at her.

"Would you die for this woman?" Bane asked, his voice quiet, a mocking tone underneath the mechanical layer. Katty looked him in the eyes and found that she had courage.

"My life has been forfeit since you sacked my city."

"Please-"

"Stop," said Katty, turning away from Bane, her voice weak. She took a step out of the crowds, away from the bodies. Then, louder-

"Stop!"

Her voice broke but it cracked like a whip around the room and, after a few moments, silence slowly fell. She walked unsteadily out to the old lady, who was staring at her with wide eyes.

"And who are you?" asked the man who was demanding a sentence.

"Kathryn Sherman," she said, her voice shaking. "You?"

"Jonathan Crane. You are willing to defend this woman, found guilty of the crime of lowering the quality of life of all those present by the withholding of funds and properties that should have been shared by all?"

There was a scattered cheer.

"Yes." Louder, then- "Yes."

"And you will share her fate?"

Katty exchanged a wide eyed, terrified look with the woman. Her eyes were gray and she looked like Katty's grandmother.

"Yes."

"Very well." He made a loose, circular gesture at her. "Go."

There were very few times in her life when she'd been able to think of nothing to say. Now was probably the most inopportune of them but her mind, which had so rarely failed her before, was utterly blank. She looked around the room, heart hammering and mouth falling open, trying to think.

"This, um- this is Lana Shanport. She- her family made a lot of money, back before the Great Depression, I don't- don't remember exactly how."

_Breathe._

She focused on Crane and drew in a deep breath. "She gave three fourths of her entire fortune away within a year of inheriting it, and every year after that she- she gave-"

She looked down at Mrs. Shanport. "How much was it?" she asked the old woman quietly.

"Twenty five percent of my income for the year," she whispered. Katty nodded and looked back up at Crane. Her hand had found Lana Shanport's shoulder and she was gripping it tightly, partly to comfort the old woman, and partly to ensure she remain standing. Every inch of her body burned and she was so tired that she felt nauseous, and she felt the beginning of a migraine prickling behind her eyes.

"She gave twenty five percent of her income per year, every year, up until now. We learned about her in school!" she shouted, whirling around and gesturing at all the people surrounding them. There was a steady stream of quiet muttering. "We learned about her and- the um, the statistics of how many people she helped. It was… a lot. She helped a lot of people, probably everyone in this room, and you're going to kill her? She was born into her money, she didn't choose it, but she did choose to help, she helped everyone. She helped everyone in this room and you're going to just let her die?"

"She has no idea the kind of life we've had!" came a bellow from the back of the room. Katty whirled to find the voice, but saw only a wall of bodies in winter clothes.

"She does now!" she shouted. "She's in the cold, look at her, her clothes are all torn, it doesn't look like she's had a shower in days-"

"A week," said Mrs. Shanport quietly and then gave a small sob.

"A week," Katty amended. There were a few moments of silence and she looked around at all the faces. Many were hard and unforgiving, their owners angry to the core, but a few other people looked softer. Kinder. Katty addressed them.

"Please," she said. "This woman has done nothing but help people, her whole life. There might be people out there who deserve some sort of punishment, but not this one. Not this one."

Total silence fell this time. Katty stared at Jonathan Crane and he stared back, his face unreadable.

Lana Shanport reached for Katty's hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

"Well?" called Jonathan Crane, his voice very bored and slightly annoyed. "Should this woman die?"

Quiet mutterings. Katty held her breath and Mrs. Shanport squeezed her hand more tightly.

Then quiet.

"Or," said Jonathan Crane, his voice now dripping with annoyance and condescension, "should she live, and see how we have lived all these years?"

There were a few shouts of agreement. Jonathan Crane banged his gavel and sent several books sliding down the pile to the floor.

"Done. Take her outside. Let her find her own way home."

A man and a woman grabbed Lana Shanport by her upper arms and half marched, half dragged her towards the double doors.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you."

"Your job is done, Miss Sherman," said Jonathan Crane carelessly. "You can leave."

"Is there anyone else?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Is anyone else going to be sentenced today?" She spoke very slowly, as if to a small child. The pain was building behind her eyes.

"There are a few more on the agenda, yes. Are you going to defend all of them?"

And she realized that she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she said no.

"Yes."

"Very well- bring out the next one!"

Two men dragged out a girl- Katty stared. She couldn't have been more than sixteen and they shoved her in the chair before melting into the crowd.

"Help," sobbed the girl. Her hair was blonde, the shade that showed it came out of an expensive bottle, and she looked like money- she was beautiful but there was dirt under her manicured nails. She looked vaguely familiar. "Please, please help me, I- I don't want to die."

"It's okay," Katty told her, as calmly as she could. "I'm going to help you."

"And will you share her fate?"

The girl gave a broken sob as tears slid down her pale face.

"Yes," said Katty, even as she realized she knew nothing about this girl. Jonathan Crane seemed to know it too, and he smiled at her.

There was silence.

"Well?" said Jonathan. "Any moving words for us? Or does this one deserve her sentence?"

"No," said Katty sharply. "I- I don't know her, but she doesn't deserve to die."

"If you don't know her, how can you come to that conclusion?"

"She's- she's just a kid, look at her. She's a scared kid, she doesn't deserve to die-"

There was a hard laugh behind her and a woman spoke from the crowd. Her hair was reddish and pulled back; her skin was pale and she had a gun at her hip.

"Do you know who that is?"

Katty heard enough of mocking from Bane to recognize it from this woman.

"No," she said flatly. The woman shook her head with an angry grin.

"She isn't like the last one, that's for sure. Let me tell you something, about _her_, and about a friend of mine. That girl," she pointed, her eyebrows rising, and Katty looked down at the girl, "her name is Abby Claire James. A normal girl your age would recognize her; she's in reality TV shows and has gotten filthy rich by being lazy and catty and a bad example. Point being- she's got money. A lot of it. Now I have- had- a friend. Named Eddie. He had a string of bad luck, really bad luck, and lost his right arm. He ended up on the streets."

The woman's voice was growing thick. Abby's sobs increased.

"Ed was one of the best guys I ever knew. He didn't bother people, just sat on the sidewalk and said 'thank you' to anyone who had a dollar or a minute to spare. But one day- one day a girl walked past him. A pretty girl. He said her hair looked like the color of sunlight. Ed wasn't that old, just thirty two. He thought this was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen and he recognized her. Thought she looked familiar. He called out to her. Didn't ask for money. Just her name."

Abby's body was shaking with sobs. Apart from the girl's cries and the woman's words, there was silence in the room. Katty looked at Bane. He was watching her, his hands clutching at the collar of his coat in the way he did sometimes. His eyes were unreadable and suddenly Katty wanted to show him that she was _not _weak. She might not be able to touch him in a fight but she'd saved one life today and she could save this girl too.

"She went over to him, smiling all pretty. She didn't ask his name. She reached down and took his tin, all the money he'd gotten for the day. Twenty dollars in the tin. Then, sweet as a little angel, she told him to give her all the money he had, or she'd find the nearest cop and tell them he'd tried to rape her. She took fifty seven dollars and eight cents from him. All the money he had in the world."

The laugh the woman gave then was hard, even harder than the first one that had announced her presence. It was a laugh that sounded like slate, bitter and easily cracked. It cracked now.

"But that wasn't enough, was it, no, not enough for Abby James, even though she makes forty thousand dollars an episode and he had fifty bucks in the world. No, she found that cop. And she told him Eddie tried to rape her. Like a man with one arm even had a shot, never mind that it was- it was broad daylight! In the middle of the city! The cop didn't care. No one cared. They put him in jail and of course he got out, I was his phone call, I got him out, but- word had spread, and even though there were no _fucking _charges, everyone wanted to believe in their little angel. And then- two nights later- some guys came and they beat him to death him, shouting 'This is for Abby,' the whole time. All because he asked the pretty rich girl what her name was. And you're gonna stand there and defend her?" the woman's voice rose to a shout. "Let her _die_!"

"Let her die!" was shouted and repeated around the room. Tears were streaming down Abby's face.

"I'm sorry," she gasped, turning to the woman. "I'm so, so sorry-"

The woman's face contorted. "It's to late for _sorry_, girl, you're going to pay for what you did and what you'd _still_ be doing and no dumb kid thinks she's a lawyer is going to save you."

Shouts of agreement sounded from the crowd as the mass of bodies surged forward, just a bit, their faces angry and hard. There was no forgiveness there.

Abby kept sobbing. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

"She's apologizing," said Katty desperately, whirling around, trying to find a sign of forgiveness anywhere. "She's sorry, she knows she screwed up-"

"Too late for that!"

"Let the bitch die!"

"No!" Katty shouted. "No! She's just a kid, she has time- she can learn, she can try to help, try to- make up for it-"

"You can't make up for murder," spat the woman.

"Then don't become murders!" said Katty, pleading now, taking a few steps towards the woman. "Be better than her, show her- show her the good humanity is capable of-"

"I think the court has reached a decision," came Jonathan's voice, only it wasn't so careless now. He sounded vaguely interested.

"No!" Katty shouted again, turning to face Jonathan now. "No!"

He gestured around at the crowd. "They want her dead, and this is a court of the people, where the _people _make decisions-"

"I'm one of the people! Her death is not my decision-"

"Of course not. You'll be sharing it."

"No."

The voice came from the back of the room, mechanical and rumbling and ringing in the ears of everyone present. Complete silence fell as everyone turned to stare at Bane.

Jonathan Crane's brow furrowed. "No?"

"The girl is not to be harmed."

"But-"

Bane's head shot up.

"The girl is not to be harmed."

Crane closed his mouth and a shutter seemed to fall behind his eyes. "Very well. Girl, do you still wish to represent your client?"

"Yes." Katty's heart was pounding. Crane's eyes went to the place where Bane stood and then they flashed back to her. His lips tightened.

"Well, then… what do you have to say in defense of this girl's actions?"

"Nothing," said Katty, glad that her voice was calm even though her whole body was shaking. "Absolutely nothing."

Abby sobbed.

"What she did was horrible, there is no excuse for it. She has a man's blood on her hands and that's something she'll have to live with every day for her life, something she'll always have to atone for."

"You speak of forgiveness."

Katty's voice was very quiet.

"Yes."

Muttering.

"Some would say that there is no forgiveness, for a thing like this."

"Maybe not," said Katty, and now her voice did shake. "I can tell you one thing, though, for certain- she'll never forgive herself."

"Is that supposed to be some sort of consolation?" snarled Eddie's friend. Katty shook her head.

"No. But- but it's still true and it still means something. Look, redemption- it's not- it's never an easy thing, it just isn't. Some things can be forgiven and some- maybe they can't, I know that there are some people I'll never be able to forgive."

Very briefly, her eyes met Bane's.

"So I'm not asking you to forgive her. I'm asking you to let her live and to let her earn it, every day for the rest of her life. It's not too late- good- good can come from horrible things, bad people can be made _good. _It's not too late."

Silence fell. Katty looked around at the crowd and they looked back; she didn't try to interpret their expressions because she was scared, so scared.

"And the verdict?" called Jonathan Crane.

A single voice rose. A boy's.

"Let her die."

Nods; and then more voices joined in.

"Let her die.

"No," Katty said, desperately, whirling around.

"_Let her die-"_

"NO-"

"Please!" Abby shrieked, rising to her feet. "Please, I'm sorry, I'll do anything-"

"Yes," said Jonathan Crane's voice, rising above the chanting multitudes, "You will. You'll die."

"_Let her die-"_

"This isn't justice!" Katty shouted as two men came forward and grabbed Abby by her arms. "No, let her _go-"_

"Please- help me-"

"_Let her die-"_

_"_This isn't right! This is just angry people in a mob, this is not right, this is EVIL!" Her voice had risen to a shriek, echoing above the chanting. Abby was straining and screaming as the men forced her to kneel.

"NO!" Katty launched forward and was held back by two more people, a man and a woman, each grabbing one of her arms. She struggled against them but they did not let her go and she was weak from exhaustion and from fighting Bane all night.

One of the men pulled out a gun. Abby's eyes found Katty's and they were wide, glassy, terrified.

"_LET HER DIE-"_

"LET HER GO THIS IS WRONG-"

"Abby James, you are sentenced to death-"

"PLEASE, NO-"

"Let me go, GET AWAY FROM HER-"

"_LET HER DIE LET HER DIE LET HER DIE-"_

"Please," Abby said, as the gun was pressed against the back of her golden head, and she was not addressing the mob, but Katty. "Please."

"It's okay," Katty said. "It's gonna be-"

There was a bang, a silence, and a thud. Katty's arms were released. The room dissolved into cheers.

Katty stared down at the body. Her face was hidden, pressed against the ground, blood beginning to pool steadily around her, staining the strands of hair that remained on what had been her head.

Katty stumbled and fell to her knees, her ears ringing, vaguely aware that the crowd was pushing around her, screaming and laughing. She closed her eyes.

The girl's blood was warm on her skin.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"No Church in the Wild" by Kanye West

A/N: Again, you guys super rock. Y'ALL IS THE BEST. This chapter... was interesting to write. My natural instinct is to make things really optimistic, so I had to fight myself a lot of the way while writing this chapter. Hmm. I kind of have more that i want to say but I'm not really sure how to say it.

Anyway! I hope you guys like it. :)

Love,

AL


	5. A Truth For A Truth

**_She Rises _by Agape Love**

* * *

_You'll see him in your nightmares,_  
_you'll see him in your dreams_  
_He'll appear out of nowhere but_  
_he ain't what he seems_  
_You'll see him in your head,_  
_on the TV screen_  
_And hey buddy, I'm warning_  
_you to turn it off_  
_He's a ghost, he's a god,_  
_he's a man, he's a guru_  
_You're one microscopic cog_  
_in his catastrophic plan_  
_Designed and directed by_  
_his red right hand_

**Chapter Five: A Truth For A Truth**

Bane watched her fall to her knees and then she disappeared in the surging mob, her small form swallowed by the multitudes. He moved into action suddenly; he knew mob mentality, he knew how it worked. He'd counted on it when he sacked the city, but he knew that it meant she was in danger.

_My life is forfeit._

Brave girl. Spectacularly stupid, but still brave. He pushed his way through the crowds and eventually they parted for him as he made his way to his stupid, brave little girl.

She was kneeling on the ground when the crowd parted around him, falling quiet. The dead girl's head was in her lap, staining her jeans with blood. Kathryn's lips were moving, her eyes closed, and Bane saw tear tracks on her pale face. He saw, for the first time, a tiny cross on a silver chain, hanging from her neck over the dead girl's face.

He realized, suddenly, that she was praying. He watched as she closed the girl's eyes with an unsteady hand. Her whole body was shaking violently. Light from the windows lining the top of the walls fell on her like a spotlight, and her golden-blonde hair glinted and glittered in it like a living thing. Bane took in these details and more as he moved to her. He watched her chest rise and fall, her breaths uneven, he saw a tear slide down her nose and then drop onto the dead girl's forehead; he saw the ease with which her lips moved. Whatever prayer she was invoking, she knew it by heart.

Bane went to her and stood over her shoulder, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. The crowd watched the two of them, the chanting now completely gone. The room seemed to hang in a sort of suspension, like time had paused and only the two of them could make it start again.

"Why?" she whispered, her prayer done, her golden head still bowed, not looking at him. "Why did you bring me here?"

"All things must be broken before they can be remade."

She looked up at him then, her blue eyes bright and red and lined in shadows. Her face was very pale.

"What are you making me in to?"

He just looked at her.

"Something new."

He helped her to her feet and she let him. He kept a hand on her shoulder and the crowd parted around them silently, watching, waiting. Judging. As they reached the door Bane heard Jonathan Crane's voice-

"-and now Jonah Casmere will be appearing before-"

The doors closed behind them with a bang, cutting off Crane's voice and leaving them with only the silence of a city in mourning. Bane and Kathryn walked down the stairs and Bane saw that she was shivering again, harder than she had been before they'd reached the court that morning, her whole body shaking and her teeth chattering.

"On you go," he said as they reached the bike and she climbed on unsteadily, her arms wrapping around her midsection. He sat behind her, reaching his arms around her, and it did not escape his notice that she drew away from him. He thought it vaguely interesting; she was clearly freezing and he radiated warmth, yet she shied away from him, closing in on herself to escape touching him. There was a measure of power in that.

The engine revved to life and with a jolt they were moving. Her shivers grew more and more violent as the wind around them increased speed, shaking so hard that she was actually causing the bike to become unsteady, rocking back and forth as they rode through the empty, snow covered streets of Gotham.

Bane slowed to a stop in front of a building with broken windows and moved forward slightly on the seat so that his chest was pressed against her back. She jerked forward as though she'd been electrocuted but Bane grabbed her firmly by the waist and pulled her back into him, his hand pressing into her hip in a clear warning. She was soft and warmth under his hand, he noted almost clinically.

"You will cause us to crash if you keep shaking. You may consider your life forfeit, but mine is precious to me. _Stay_."

The bike roared to life again and, very slowly, her shaking slowed and then stopped.

He could not feel the curves of her body against his chest thanks to the hard rigidity of the vest he wore, but the hand he'd touched her with seemed to burn.

000

She was quiet all the way through the building and up the elevator to the apartment they shared. Bane did not trouble himself to worry about her, but he did observe how pale she was, how unsteady she seemed on her feet. Though they were out of the cold, her teeth were still chattering, and Bane recognized that she was in a kind of shock. She wasn't really a normal person, let alone a normal girl, but shock affected everyone the same way and it was not difficult to spot the signs.

He felt an almost detached satisfaction. He hadn't expected her to react the way she did, immediately jumping into the fire to save whomever she could, but then, he didn't really know her that well, either. He had underestimated her bravery and her stupidity.

The elevator doors slid open with a hiss and a ding.

"You need to eat something," he told her as they stepped into the light filled room, his mask hissing as he breathed. He'd grown used to the sound but he knew how it unsettled other people; made him seem less than human, and it was a discomfort on their part that he did not hesitate to use to his advantage.

"I'm not hungry," she said quietly. He raised an eyebrow.

"I did not _ask _if you were hungry. You have gone into shock, and your body needs energy. You will get something to eat, and then you may sleep for the rest of the day."

Her eyes flicked up to him. The looks she gave him were not generally filled with affection but this one was something new; this was ice in place of her usual fire. She hadn't broken, not yet, but something had changed inside of her golden head.

"Tonight we will be getting to know each other a little better," he continued, his mechanical voice a parody of the sort of tone a teacher might use with a student. Her eyes searched his for just a moment, and then she nodded before turning on her heel and walking away from him, stopping to grab a banana out of the fridge. Bane realized that she would need more food; there was only fruit and a gallon of milk. She didn't seem to be able to move quickly and she was slouching, her shoulders hunched over slightly as though she was trying to protect herself from something.

Bane didn't move until he heard her door click shut.

She didn't seem the type to try and kill herself but Bane didn't want to risk it; she was not allowed the satisfaction of knowing she'd robbed him. He followed her into her room and saw her sitting on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly at the floor. The stuffed cat he'd gotten her as a cruel joke was in her arms and he was reminded, so suddenly that it was almost violent, of a young Talia, clutching a tiny doll made out of rags to her chest, deep in the pit a lifetime ago. He pushed the similarity away; it would do more harm than good to compare the two women. The bottle of Oxycodone was on the nightstand, open, but it didn't look like many pills were missing; certainly not enough for an overdose

"How many did you take?" he asked her, his mechanical voice a low rumble. The blonde answered without looking at him.

"One."

"I would not have thought you the kind of person to numb your pain by artificial means." His words were a challenge and an insult wrapped in a mechanical, amiable tone.

Her eyes flashed up to him and he saw the fire in them again, burning and raging. When she spoke, her voice was hard and biting.

"Coming from you, that is _almost _funny."

"Ah, but the pain I must numb comes from the _body_, not the mind. Your wounds may heal in time, but mine never will."

She just looked at him then, really looked at him, her eyes bright, her mouth pressed into the same hard line it'd been in when he first saw her. Her cross rested on the pale skin of her chest, glinting and glittering even with her back to the light from the window.

"Sleep, little girl," he said, his mechanical voice sliding and riding over the words. "Sleep, and pray to your God that you do not dream."

Her eyes were unreadable and bright.

"There are more important things to pray about then what's going on in my head."

He smiled then, behind the mask, and almost wished she could see it. The mask hissed quietly as he exhaled in a soft laugh.

"And there always will be."

000

He did not leave the apartment that day. He sat on the couch that smelled vaguely of laundry and gardenias, a smell that he'd already begun to associate with his brave, stupid little captive, and he read. He heard her moving around occasionally, shifting on her bed, and at one point he heard the water from the shower in her room running for what seemed like a very long time.

Talia came in the late afternoon with the rumors that the people were passing around and a bruise on her cheekbone. She gave a small smile when Bane touched it lightly.

"Miranda Tate is many things, but she is not a fighter," she said, still smiling, her accent lilting. Bane smirked under the mask, knowing she'd be able to tell; they'd spent enough time with each other over the past twenty one years for her to memorize every line and curve and angle of his face. Her smile widened into a grin in response.

"And Talia al-Ghul?" he asked, his voice amused. Talia's eyes glinted with a familiar fire.

"The man is missing a certain necessary body part."

"Ah?"

"His head."

For a moment they just looked at each other and then Talia burst into laughter, Bane right along with her. It wasn't the mocking laugh that Katty was subjected to; it was genuine, loud and full of mirth, despite the mechanical hiss that tainted it.

And it was only for Talia.

000

"How are things going with your little captive?" she asked him later as they sat on the couch. His arm was outstretched over the back and she leaned into him, the warmth between their bodies familiar and comfortable and reassuring.

Bane gave a filtered chuckle. "Well enough. I had underestimated just how deep her bravery and stupidity penetrated."

The grin Talia gave him was wicked. "You do tend that."

"She reminds me of you," he informed her, raising his eyebrows, and laughed when she punched him in the stomach.

"Because she's stupid?" she asked with a teasing smile. The smile melted off of Bane's face under the mask as he looked at her.

"Because she's brave," he said, quietly, his voice a low rumble under the hiss. Talia's mouth opened slightly in surprise and for a few moments they just looked at each other.

"Bane," she murmured, reaching a hand up and stroking his face where his flesh met the mask. He closed his eyes.

"I would look on your face," he heard her say as her fingers traced patterns on his skin. "Before…"

He took her small, calloused hands in his and opened his eyes.

"Soon," he said, his voice so low it was almost hidden by the mechanical rumble from his mask. "Soon."

000

He sat very still for a long time after Talia had left, thinking. The mask served its purpose- it kept him from slipping into a pain induced catatonic state, and it inspired fear and whispers and rumors, all of which made people easy to control.

But he grew tired of it. There were times, more and more frequently, that the mask was nothing but a hindrance, a boundary that could not be crossed. When Talia had touched his face he'd wanted nothing more to rip the damned thing off his face and fuck the consequences and kiss her, hold her- but he couldn't. He knew that.

But there were other ways. Less efficient, maybe, than the mask and the medicine administered, but there were ways to free himself of the mask, even if for a few hours at a time. As it stood now, he could have the mask off for fifteen minutes with the use of morphine, long enough to eat and shave and brush his teeth- he'd never had an interest in removing his mask for Talia, only to have her repulsed by rotting teeth.

She hadn't seen his face, all of his face, for nineteen years. And they were running out of time.

000

Kathryn emerged just before sundown, her hair extremely messy on one side of her head and her eyes drooping, but there was more color in her face. Bane looked up from the book he was reading and saw her watching him.

"There's a meal for you in the fridge," he said, his words, as always, tainted by the hissing of the mask. The look she gave him was unreadable and hard, but after a few seconds she nodded and shuffled over to the fridge, a shiny stainless steel contraption that reflected anything within a ten foot radius of it. Bane watched her put the food in the microwave and then she sat at the table in front of the bay window in the kitchen, eating slowly. She ignored him; whether because she was lost in her thoughts or because she wanted to spite him, he didn't know. But he didn't try to hide the fact that he was watching her and, when she'd finished eating and stood at the sink washing her dishes, she spoke.

"How do you eat?"

His eyes flashed. Her face didn't change and she met his gaze solidly, her expression flat and unafraid. When he didn't speak, she continued, throwing a towel in the sink and crossing her arms across her chest. He noticed, not for the first time, that she was a little chubby and very short. It didn't seem to bother her, however; he supposed she had more pressing things on her mind.

"I mean, you said we'd be getting to know each other better tonight, so I figured I'd start."

Behind the mask, Bane gave a very tight smile. Katty flicked on a light, sending the shadows scattering, and then turned back to look at him, something challenging in the set of her mouth.

"I should have been more specific," he said, hiding annoyance with the mocking amusement he so often presented her with. "I will be getting to know more about you."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"Has no one told you about _life_, little one?"

"A terrorist sacked my city," she said flatly. "I'm extremely aware about life and fairness. But," she continued, moving out of the kitchen and sitting next to him on the couch, as far away from him as she could, "you'll get better results out of me if we share information instead of you just sucking it out of me."

"I could beat it out of you, if you'd prefer."

She shook her head and gave a tight smile. "No, I'll talk. I'll tell you things, and enough of it'll be the truth to make it difficult to weed out the lies."

She leaned forward then, her eyes burning, her arms on her knees, her cross swinging out from between her breasts. "Or you could make it a little easier on yourself, and just trade a truth for a truth."

For a few minutes he just looked at her, his eyes searching her face and coming to the conclusion that he'd underestimated her again. She did not flinch from his gaze. Something had changed today; she was not afraid of him.

"You aren't afraid of me," he said, and it wasn't a question. Her face didn't change.

"Not like I was," she said quietly, and he saw no lie in her blue eyes.

"Why?"

"Because today, I- those people, in there, in the court, I knew some of them. They were good people, before you came, but now that they don't have to answer to anyone, they turned into monsters, all anger and hatred and revenge. That's a lot scarier than you." She gave a laugh. "The worst you can do is kill me."

"You're afraid of human nature," he said softly, his mask hissing over the words. Slowly, she shook her head.

"Not exactly. I- people are good, essentially, under it all. I'll always believe that. But people- when- when they get drunk on whatever that was today- power, mob mentality, no accountability or responsibility at all- that's what scares me. Human beings in a mob turn into monsters, and that scares me."

"More than a monster?"

She laughed then, loud and a little mocking, and gave him a look that was almost fond. "Bane, at the end of the day, you're only human. There are things a lot worse than you out there."

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She leaned back against the couch, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Okay, now you know more about me. Your turn."

"Ask."

"Anything?"

"I may choose not to answer."

"What is Miranda Tate's real name?"

He started and stared. Her eyes flared with something like triumph and, when he said nothing, she said, "Come on. It's not like I'm going to tell anyone."

There were a few moments of silence.

"Her name is Talia."

"Al Ghul?"

"How do you-"

"I heard you guys talking earlier, when you thought I was asleep."

For a second he was quiet. "If you knew, then why ask?"

She grinned. "To see if you would tell the truth."

For the first time in a very long time, he was at a complete loss for words. He was annoyed and amused and impressed and something like proud- there was more to her than bravery and stupidity, after all.

"I have underestimated you at every turn," he informed her, his eyes searching her face as he spoke. "It seems I have more to learn about you than I thought."

Her eyes burned.

"Ask."

"How old are you?"

She smiled, suddenly, her eyes flicking away from him. There was something strange in the smile, something underneath it, and her eyes, unreadable, held no clue.

"I'll be twenty in two days. How old are you?"

"I don't know," he said evenly, his mask hissing over the words. Her eyes flashed to him.

"You don't-"

"Until twenty years ago, I had no use for an age, and even now, it means nothing to me."

"Where did you-"

"A truth for a truth," he said calmly, and she fell quiet. "It's my turn for a truth."

She waved a hand at him and leaned back on the couch, crossing her legs underneath her.

"Why did you defend those women?"

The look she gave him said that it should have been obvious. "Someone had to," she said quietly. "And it didn't look like anyone else was going to."

"And what makes it _your_ duty?"

The expression on her face was confused and she stared at him out of slightly narrowed eyes. "I was _there_. That made it my duty. Where are you from?"

"I was born in Central America."

Her brows furrowed.

"In a prison."

Her brows shot up.

"Who was leading the revolution with you?"

It was somewhat incredible, really, just how quickly the shutter fell behind her eyes, leaving her face completely expressionless.

"No one."

He leaned forward then, his eyes burning into hers.

"Do not lie to me," he said, his mechanical voice amiable and barely concealing a threat.

"I'm not. Are you in love with Talia?"

He made very sure that nothing in his face changed.

_Enough of it'll be the truth to make it difficult for you to weed out the lies._

"No," he said.

_A truth for a truth._

Her eyes searched his then, and there was something unreadable in her face. He thought he saw her smirk, just a little, but if she did, she hid it well.

"This morning, you talked of redemption," his voice was quiet and conversational but the mechanical hiss turned every word into a threat and a challenge and a promise. "Did you believe what you were saying?"

She didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"And anyone can be redeemed?"

That time, when she looked at him, he could have almost sworn she could read his mind.

"I don't know," she said, quietly. "Maybe. It depends."

"On what?"

There was quiet for a few seconds and she just looked at him, her eyes dark.

"On what you're willing to sacrifice."

000

The girl was asleep as the moon hung in the sky outside of the windows, her legs curled underneath her, her mouth open. She was bathed in the pale light and looked almost ethereal, although her brows still furrowed above her closed eyes. Bane watched her for a few minutes without seeing her, thinking and quantifying and planning.

His little hostage. His brave, smart, stupid, naïve, _good _little hostage. He'd never thought to meet in his life someone who was good, truly good down to their core, but she just might be.

He'd have to change that. But first, he could use it.

000

When Katty woke up on that comfortable leather couch, she was alone, sunlight filled the room, and a blanket had been thrown over her. She touched it, gingerly, as though afraid she would burn if she grabbed it too tightly. Her chest burned, fiercely, with an emotion she couldn't name, and as she sat up, the blanket falling to her lap, she breathed-

"_Dammit_."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

A/N: After writing this chapter, I have gained so much more respect for those brave, brave people who have attempted to write from Bane's point of view. Let me tell you. It is CRAZY HARD. It was also loads of fun. i watched a lot of Bane clips, trying to nail his way of speaking, so that's been incredibly fun and interesting.

Also, if you can't tell, I very much think Bane was in love with Talia, at least as much as it's possible for a guy like him to be in love.

AND THE PLOT BEGINS TO DEVELOP! Can't wait to hear what y'all think!

AL


	6. Hospital Doors

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_Pull the blindfold down_  
_So your eyes can't see_  
_Now run as fast as you can_  
_Through this field of trees_

_I can't shake this feeling I've got_  
_My dirty hands_  
_Have I been in the wars?_  
_The saddest thing that I'd ever seen_  
_Were smokers outside the hospital doors_

_Someone turn me around_  
_Can I start this again?_  
_Now someone turn us around_  
_Can we start this again?_

_We've all been changed from what we were_  
_Our broken hearts left smashed on the floor_  
_I can't believe you if I can't hear you_

**Chapter Five: Hospital Doors**

"Girl," came a mechanical, filtered voice, slicing through the deep and peaceful haze of sleep. "Wake up."

Her eyes opened and she stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, extremely confused and still sleepy from the Oxycodone induced slumber. The warmth and oblivion that sleep brought was fading, quickly, its place taken by the knot of tension in her stomach that was always with her when the drugs weren't in her system. It was certainly not the healthiest way of dealing with her situation, but she didn't have the luxury of being picky.

"Good morning."

Bane's voice was definitely amused under that mechanical hiss. She turned her head to look at him, her brain still trying to sort itself out into something resembling coherency. He stood beside her bed, towering over her, and she blinked a few times before his face and that mask came into focus.

"What-"

"You'll be accompanying me this morning."

She rubbed her eyes, pushing the sleep out of them.

"Two days ago, you said that and I ended up covered in a sixteen year old's blood. I'll pass."

_Today is my birthday._

"I wouldn't recommend it," he said, his voice light and concealing a threat. His eyes flicked pointedly over her legs, one eyebrow quirking just slightly, and she realized that she'd kicked the covers off of herself during the night, leaving her bare legs exposed to the masked man's gaze. His eyes flashed back to hers and the look he gave her was definitely a warning. She wished she could see what his mouth was doing.

"Fine," she mumbled, swinging her legs off of the bed and running a hand through her dirty hair. "Let me take a shower. Might as well look attractive for the day's massacre."

She could have sworn he smiled.

000

She didn't have a hairbrush and had to make due with her fingers, running them roughly through her hair as she glowered at her reflection in the mirror.

She was twenty years old. It was strange; she didn't really feel different than she had when she was younger, although she _knew _she'd changed. Normally, today would be a day of laughter and family and celebration and her best friend, with whom she shared a birthday. They were twins, of a sort, born on the same day, exactly twelve hours apart; twins who didn't find each other until they were thirteen and then the rest of it was history.

Katty hoped Holly, wherever she was, was safe.

She pulled her hair back into a French braid so that it would stay out of her face, swallowed a little white pill, and left her room, wishing very much that she could go back to sleep.

Bane was waiting for her in the living room, and, to a surprise so intense she wondered if she was hallucinating, he held out a box to her. She stared from it to him, uncomprehending. He was smiling.

"It's your birthday, isn't it?"

"Uh- yeah."

"You have a very low tolerance to the cold, and it'll only be getting cooler. Take it."

She slowly took the box and pulled the lid off. Inside it was a coat, leather on the outside and some sort of soft insulation on the inside. She let the box drop to the floor and held the coat out in front of her, appraising it, hoping very much that it did not show on her face that, in another life, this was exactly the coat she'd have picked out for herself.

"Thank you," she said, and pulled it on.

Something became very clear to her then, as she and Bane made their way out of the building. She didn't know why, but he wanted her compliant for something. He was trying to Stockholm Syndrome his way into her life, for whatever reason; maybe he just thought she'd be easier to get along with, but it also meant that her guard had to go way up.

They didn't ride the bike this time but instead walked through the streets of Gotham. They saw people every now and then, but most of them scattered as soon as Bane's hulking figure and dark mask came into completely into view. This didn't escape Katty's notice and she glanced up at Bane, wondering if this was part of his master plan to make an example out of her. He knew she'd led that revolution (tried to, anyway; it was hard to get a revolution started in less than two weeks) and if the people she'd touched with her charisma and pretty words saw her now, with the terrorist who'd made their lives hell, walking with him like they were something like equals, it would be just another blow.

She glanced around her, examining the alleys and doors and side streets. For some reason, Bane had brought no guards with them, not even Barsad, who seemed to always be at Bane's side. It might be possible to get away; she was fast and she knew this city well.

As though he'd read her mind, Bane said, "I wouldn't try to run. You won't get very far."

He wasn't even looking at her.

"Where are we going?"

He looked down at her then. Just his presence was unsettling, with the mask and the voice and how big he was, but there was something about his eyes, too; they were completely gray, without a touch of any other color in them, and they put Katty on edge. She was good at people, she could read them and connect with them easily; one psychologist had described her empathy level as 'uncanny' and 'superhuman'. She'd learned a long time ago to trust her gut when it came to people, and one of the many things that terrified her about her "companion" was that she couldn't read him. Not really; not where it counted.

"You'll see," he said, his mechanical voice light and, as always, masking something much darker just under the surface. She decided not to press it.

After a few more minutes of walking in silence she started to recognize the particular path they were taking. She glanced up at her (mostly) silent companion and said quietly, "What are we doing here?"

"You want to play the hero." His mechanical voice was definitely amused and mocking. She very much wanted to hit him. "I thought I'd give you another opportunity."

"Why?"

He looked down at her then, and she could almost see the smile in his eyes.

"To see just how deep your bravery penetrates."

000

Bane had spoken of bloodshed, right before he'd released the inmates of Blackgate prison on the city, and he hadn't been wrong. That first week, the dead had numbered in hundreds. The body count had slowed after that, but the list of the dead and dying was staggering, and the hospitals were all strained to the breaking point, as many of the dead were doctors, ripped from the ER and OR and tried for their "crimes". Many of the caretakers now were med students and nurses; all of them good at their jobs, but there was simply not the man power to help all those who needed it.

Then there were the lootings. Every hospital and pharmacy had been robbed, and much of what was stolen resulted in even more casualties. The few remaining surgeons were working with morphine instead of anesthesia, and their supply of tools was severely depleted.

Bane was not a fool. He wasn't interested in another revolutionary rising up against him and so his men hunted down those who'd robbed the hospitals and returned as much as they could and now there was a guard of mercenaries stationed full time around every hospital.

One of those mercenaries nodded at Bane now as he and Katty walked through the doors of the rebuilt Gotham General. Katty remembered the day it had blown up and suddenly wished she could see Bane go up against the Joker.

_I think I would actually pay to see that,_ she thought violently, eyeing the massive man at her side as they walked through the lobby of the hospital. There was a woman sitting behind the receptionist's desk, murmuring into a phone, her eyes following the odd duo. There was a gun resting at her side, leaning against the counter.

Katty and Bane stepped into an elevator and he pressed the number 'four'.

They were going up.

000

She'd never been particularly squeamish. She had three younger siblings, had seen plenty of blood and vomit, and she was gifted with the ability to remain calm and think logically in a crisis.

But this was different.

This was a pain that went beyond the physical; this was a pain she could not heal with kind words and a smile. This was hollow eyes and shaking hands, this was spilling tears and bruises on soft bodies.

When she and Bane had stepped out of the elevator she'd found herself in the ward for people whose wounds were mental as well as physical. A doctor had rushed at them, his eyes burning, and faced down Bane in a way Katty found extremely impressive. She'd decided to like the short man with gray hair in a matter of seconds.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he'd shouted at the masked mercenary, crossing his arms over his chest. Katty had started and stared at him. Bane's face did not change.

"Do I need to remind you who protects you, doctor?" he asked, his mechanical voice mild. The doctor's eyes flashed.

"We wouldn't need protecting in the first place if it wasn't for you, so forgive me for being _ungrateful_. Every person in this hospital is here because of you, and you expect them to heal when you insist on randomly showing up? I got PTSD patients here, _sir,_ a hell of a lot of them, and seeing you sends half of them into fits! You need to leave, now, you and- whoever- that is-"

His eyes had fallen on Katty then and he frowned slightly, clearly confused.

"This will be staying with you," Bane had informed him in his hollow, grating voice, his eyebrows raising slightly as he placed a large hand on Katty's shoulder, daring the man to contradict him. "Helping in whatever capacity you best see fit."

"And why would I want help from one of yours?"

"I'm actually his captive," said Katty flatly, and she'd felt Bane's eyes burning into her and she resisted the urge to jerk his hand off of her. The doctor's mouth fell open. "I'd love to help you, if that's okay."

The doctor stared at her for a moment and then his eyes flashed back to Bane.

"You're a sick _fuck_, you know that?" he'd said, quietly, and his voice had been shaking.

"So I've been told." Bane's voice was amused. "Leave us for a moment."

The doctor gave him a glare and stalked down the hallway, entering a room on the right. When he opened the door, Katty heard sobs.

"Do not try to escape."

Bane's voice brought her back and she looked up at him silently. His eyes didn't match his mild tone; under the gray, they _burned._

"If you do," he continued, his voice amiable, "I will kill every man, woman and child in this hospital."

Her blood had run cold and his unreadable eyes searched hers for a moment. Then he'd added-

"Every one except for you."

000

The doctor- one of the few surgeons remaining who bounced around from hospital to hospital- took her to a ward filled with rape victims.

"What do you want me to do?" Katty asked, struggling to keep up with him. He didn't look at her as he answered; he had a clipboard and was looking through the papers on it with an intense concentration.

"Kid, don't take this the wrong way, but I can't trust a word that comes out of that terrorist's mouth, so I can't trust you. I want you somewhere you can't physically hurt anyone, if it comes to that."

"I am _not _one of his," said Katty, more fiercely than she meant to. The doctor looked over at her, his brown eyes surprised. "Two days ago, he took me to one of the courts and I ended up covered in a sixteen year old girl's blood."

The doctor gave a slow nod. "Alright. I still want you to start with these women, though. They could use a fresh face."

They turned and he pushed open a set of double doors.

"A lot of the women stayed here, after we patched them up and did everything for them that we could, physically," he explained as they walked down the hallways that smelled of antiseptic. "They feel safer, but they're still scared. What happened to them- well, rape's never pretty, but this shit is sick. I think it'll be good for them to see that there are people fighting back out there. That is why he took you, isn't it?"

They'd stopped walking outside another set of double doors. Katty nodded.

"I was trying to get some kind of revolt off the ground, yeah. He took me captive to 'set an example'."

The doctor nodded. "Good. Tell them that. Tell them you've been fighting."

"What's your name?"

"Tom Langer. I have to go, but I'll send someone for you in an hour or so. Just… just talk to them."

And then he was striding away in the direction they'd come from, his lab coat trailing after him. Katty took a deep breath and pushed open the doors.

000

_The women are the strong ones, truly._

It was a line from a book and it kept echoing about her head as she talked with the women in the ward. From what Langer had told her, she'd expected a bunch of shells and husks. And there was pain, a hell of a lot of it, but there was something else, too, under the pain and the PTSD and the fear. There was anger. These women were strong in a way that Katty couldn't fathom, with their shaking hands and their hollow eyes and their biting laughs. There were eight-year-old girls and sixty-seven year old grandmothers with the same burning words.

Katty explained to them who she was, why she was with Bane, and a young woman in her twenties asked abruptly what he'd done to her.

"He hasn't touched me, not like that. He's too righteous for it."

The girl snorted.

"His men sure aren't."

Katty didn't know what to say.

The woman's name was Amelia.

Tom Langer came for her an hour later and asked her from behind a sanitation mask if she was squeamish.

"No," she said, slowly, searching his eyes. She did not like the mask; she knew she'd always associate the look of it with Bane. She did not like having to read a person based on their eyes alone. Langer gave a curt nod.

"Good. Come with me."

The women said goodbye to her, told her to stay strong and to kill anyone who came near her and Katty promised she would, even if only to see the fire in that eight year old girl's eyes burn a little brighter.

And then she and Langer were in the white hallway, walking quickly.

"What's wrong?" she asked, struggling to keep up with the taller man.

"Assistant had to leave," he said shortly. "Husband died."

Something in Katty's heart stopped.

"And I'm in the middle of a surgery, so I need help."

He pushed open a door and she found herself in a sterile room. There was a figure on the operating table, a platform full of tools, lights, a drip-

"What do you need me for?" she asked, a little apprehensively.

"Just do whatever I tell you."

000

The man died.

"Shit," shouted Langer, ripping off his mask and gloves before running his fingers through his gray hair, leaving it standing on end. "_Shit."_

The heart monitor was a steady drone. The man's face was hidden under a surgical towel (Katty didn't know what they were called) and there was blood slowly trickling from the open wound on his stomach.

"What happened to him?" she asked quietly. Langer gave a strangled sound that may have been a laugh.

"One of Bane's. Or one of the mobs'. He had something someone else wanted, does it matter?"

"No," said Katty, slowly. "I guess it doesn't."

000

When Bane came back for her, she was (yet again) covered in the blood of others and the winter sun hung low in the sky.

He found her in the hallway, where she was alone, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest, sobbing silently. She was not a person who cried often, or easily, but for all of the other things that she was, she was innocent and this blood on her hands, the death and destruction and pain all around her was causing something inside of her to crack. And so she cried, but she waited until the doctor didn't need her, until she was sure she was alone, and then she collapsed against the wall and slid down it to the ground.

She heard footfalls that sounded like war drums and the mechanical hiss that announced Bane's presence and she shoved her hands across her eyes, smearing the tears across her face, and then she turned to look at him.

_This is your fault._

"It doesn't look as though you've had the best of days."

"Wonder why that might be," she muttered. He extended a hand down to her but she just gave him a look and pushed herself gracelessly up the wall. His eyes were unreadable and the mask hissed as he breathed.

"Why do you wear that?" she asked him, once they were out of the hospital and in the cold. She didn't expect him to answer and she didn't really care if he did; she was an angry child, lashing out in the only way available to her.

At least she had a coat now. She pulled it tighter around her, trying to fight off the cold.

"Why do you wear that thing around your neck?" His mechanical voice was mild and mocking but it hid a threat.

She glanced up at him, wondering if she should tell him, let him know just how _human _he was, when it came down to it. "Protection," she muttered. The rest was another story for another day.

"From what?"

Her lips twisted in a smile that she knew he wouldn't understand. "From things a lot worse than you. A truth for a truth; I wear mine for protection. What's yours for?"

Something like a shutter fell closed behind his eyes.

"Oddly enough," he said in his amiable, mechanical voice that actually sounded distantly surprised, "protection."

000

Over the next week, Bane sent her to the hospital every day. He didn't go with her anymore, and instead sent one of his people with her to make sure she didn't try to run. The two he sent with her the most were Dev and Barsad, and Katty much preferred the former; the older woman was funny in a very dry sort of way, and something about Barsad put Katty's teeth on edge. He didn't do anything, not exactly, but he was just _off. _His eyes were always distant and his smile was vague and he always seemed to have one foot in another place. When he spoke, it was in a quiet voice that would have been dreamy coming from anyone else, but from him, it was just… not all there.

She liked the hospital and she hated it, too. She loved helping people and making them laugh, but she hated the death and the blood and the chemical smell. She learned how to sow flesh together, how to set bones, how to mix drugs, how to break hard news gently, and how to hold a person's hand while their world was shattering around them. She learned to take her own pain and shove it deep down because there simply wasn't time for it.

As it turned out, though, the new skill of hers that interested Bane the most was learning how to mix and make drugs.

000

It was a week and a half after she'd been taken and she was at the hospital again, helping however she could, when she heard a familiar voice whisper her name in disbelief.

She turned around and a strangled cry tore out of her throat.

"_Mom!_"

And then she was running as fast as she could and threw her arms around her mother.

For a few moments, neither woman said anything. They stood, arms around each other, rocking slightly, both crying.

"Are you guys okay?" Katty asked into her mother's shoulder, her voice thick. "Is everyone alright?"

She felt her mother nod and they pulled back so they could look at each other's faces, still holding each other tightly. "We're all fine, yeah. When we heard what happened to you we moved into some abandoned place- we're the Richards, now."

Katty nodded and wiped her eyes. "Good. That's good. How are the midgets?"

In her family, all of the children and especially the youngest two were affectionately referred to as midgets, even the oldest boy, two years younger than Katty and towering a foot over her.

"They're scared, but- but they're staying strong, they're being good."

Katty nodded again.

"How did you find out? About- about me?"

"Holly and Brooklynne and Caroline," said her mother, and Katty felt something in her blood run cold. "They came, the day after you didn't come home, and told us what happened. They told us that you were shouting at them to run as they were throwing a bag on your head."

Katty nodded, unsure of how to respond.

"It was just reflex."

Her mother smiled, pride flowing from her green eyes. "I know. They're on the run now, the three of them. I haven't seen them since then, but they were planning on keeping on the move."

"Good."

Her mother's eyes searched her face. She wasn't a pretty woman, not anymore, at nearly fifty and after four kids, but she was beautiful nonetheless, with her short dark hair and her green eyes and a wide smile. Her eyes were now a mixture of burning pride and extreme worry and Katty knew what she was going to say before she spoke.

"Mom," she said quietly, very glad that they were alone in the hallway, "I'm alright. I'm- I'm okay."

"Let's go," said her mother urgently. "Now, let's go-"

Katty shook her head and pulled back then, away from the comfort of her mother's grasp. Karen Sherman stared at her daughter, uncomprehending.

"I can't, mom."

"Why? Just run-"

"Mom, do you know who took me?"

Karen's eyes widened. "No-"

"Bane." Her laugh was hard. "The big bad himself, I can't leave-"

"Katie, if this is some- some redemption thing, if you think you can fix him-"

"Mom, _God, _no, I hate the guy-"

"Well, you have a history with that sort of thing, Katie."

"Not with mass _murderers, _momma. Not with guys like him. But I can't leave, if I do, he'll kill everyone in the hospital, probably more than that, too."

Her mother inhaled sharply and Katty saw tears well up in her eyes. Karen brushed them away brusquely and exhaled.

"Has he done anything to you?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

"He hasn't raped you?" her mother's voice was very matter of fact and Katty shook her head.

"No. He's too righteous for that sort of thing, I think. He'd think it beneath him. Plus, I'm pretty sure he's got a thing for-" and then her eyes widened because she remembered and she grabbed her mom's hand.

"Mom," she said urgently, her eyes widening. "Mom, Miranda Tate, she's not who she says she is."

"What? Who is she?"

"I'm not going into details because then it can be traced back to me, but her name isn't Miranda Tate and she is _not_ one of the good guys. She meets with Bane sometimes, and I don't know, there's some sort of _bond _there, I'm pretty sure they go way back."

Her mother was nodding.

"Spread the word, alright? Don't go into specifics, but let people know. Maybe his plan involves her, maybe it doesn't, but spreading the seeds of doubt can't hurt. Are people still fighting?"

"Yes. Jim Gordon's on the run, there are rumors about him and another cop rounding up anyone who'll help."

Katty was nodding, the wheels in her mind spinning. "Do you know where you can find Jim Gordon?"

"I can try."

"Okay, momma, I need you to find him. And I need you to tell him everything I'm about to tell you, but _only _tell Jim Gordon, alright?"

Her mother nodded, her eyes burning.

"Tell him that…"

000

It was Barsad who came for her that afternoon, at four thirty on the dot, just like he had every time. She was waiting for him outside the hospital, leaning against the building and thinking. She'd told her mother everything she could remember, how many guards there were in the building, everything about Bane, everything she'd overheard. A lot of it she couldn't make heads or tails of, but she knew that the smallest detail could make the biggest difference and so she'd told her mother everything.

The rest was up to Jim Gordon.

She started walking out to Barsad when she saw him, her skin crawling and the knot of tension in her stomach tightening like it always did when she saw him. He gave her a strange, vacant smile. She nodded stiffly in return.

They walked in silence. Barsad didn't seem to realize she was there; he just walked, a hand on his gun, staring off into the distance. Katty watched him out of the corner of her eye, thinking that he would have been attractive, in a different life.

000

Bane was waiting for her when she reached the apartment and it surprised her; they'd developed a sort of accidental schedule over the past few days and this went against it. He normally didn't come back to the apartment (she refused to think of it as home) until much later in the evening. Sometimes they would talk. Most of the time she stalked off to her room as soon as he walked in the door and his flat, measuring stare met hers.

But he was never sitting on the couch, waiting for her, as she stepped out of the elevator. He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, without a vest or a coat and just in a black shirt that seemed to be the only normal piece of clothing her owned. It made him look strangely human. He looked up at her when she walked in and something sparked behind those gray eyes.

"My dear," he said, his voice mockingly affectionate behind the mask. "Please, sit down."

Wordlessly and warily, she did so, sitting as far away from him as she could. He looked over at her and his mask hissed as he breathed.

"I have a task for you, girl, at the hospital."

"Okay," she said slowly. "What?"

He pulled a piece of paper out of one of his pockets and handed it to her; she took it, careful to avoid touching him. On it was a list of chemicals and medicines that were familiar to her, now, after a week of mixing and improvising where she had to. She looked up at him sharply.

"These are all analgesics. Is your mask screwing up?"

His grey eyes looked amused. "No, but I would like to free myself of it, if it's possible. You will get these for me, tomorrow."

"Then what?"

His eyes crinkled up in what she'd learned to interpret as smile.

"Then you go to work."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors" by the Editors

A/N: JUST SO EVERYONE KNOWS, I have changed my username. It is now 'Paradisical815' and if you understand what that's a reference to, i will love you forever. ;)

Things are going to be picking up pace very, very soon. I hope you guys are excited cause I am, I'm really looking forward to writing the next few chapter.

Also- I mentioned in my first A/N that this started off as a story I wrote for myself and my three best friends- we write fun, short little things for each other all the time and (obviously) this one mutated into its own life form. it is not, however, the only one- I am also writing three other stories for each other them. They are based around the same timeline and the three girls have been mentioned in this story- Holly, Brooklynne and Caroline. I haven't gotten nearly as far in those as I am in this one, but my question to you is, would you be interested in reading them once I finish this one? They revolve around, respectively, Jonathan Crane, Harvey Dent, and the Joker, and run parallel to this story, all while exploring different (but also parallel) themes. Let me know if you're interested! I have to make sure it's okay with the ladies if i post them, so we'll see.

you guys rock!

Paradisical


	7. Potions and Poisons

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_What have the demons done?_  
_What have the demons done?_  
_With the luminous light that once shined from your eyes_  
_What makes you feel so alone_  
_Is it the whispering ghosts_  
_That you feared the most_  
_But the blackness in your heart_  
_Won't last forever_  
_I know it's tearing you apart_  
_But it's a storm you can weather_

_Oh sister_  
_Those lines etched in your hands_  
_They're hardened and rough like a road map of sorrow_  
_My sister_  
_There is a sadness on your face_  
_You're like a motherless child who's longing for comfort_  
_What's running through your veins_  
_That's causing you such pain?_  
_Does it have something to do with the pills they gave to you?_  
_What is eating at your soul?_  
_Was it the whispering ghosts that left you out in the cold?_

**Chapter Seven: Potions and Poisons**

It was sickeningly easy to take what she needed the next day. Dr. Langer trusted her well enough to leave her to her own devices, gave her a pager so that he could call her if he needed her, and let her go from ward to ward and room to room like an honorary nurse, taking temperatures and changing bandages and administering medicine.

She snuck off, down to the basement, where the hospital kept its lab and supply of medicine. She pulled out Bane's list and started going through the shelves, her heart pounding, checking over her shoulder every few minutes. She was revolted with herself; she knew just how much this medicine was needed by the people she was supposed to be helping and she was _choosing _to take it anyway because she was scared of a mercenary.

_You're disgusting._

Tramadol, general anesthetic, oxycodone, hydromorphone, lidocaine, halothane- there were names she recognized and names she didn't. There were pills and liquids and syringes and she put it all in a bag, arranging it carefully, not wanting anything to spill or break. She took some other things, too, that she'd learned could be useful- mainly chemicals that stimulated the release of dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline. She wasn't sure if she'd need them, but she figured she'd rather only have to do this once.

When she thought she'd gotten it all, she leaned on a table and read over the list again, double-checking it with the medicine in her bag. When she was sure she had everything, she drew in a deep breath and looked around the room.

She flicked the lights off and left.

Dev had told her that morning that Bane wanted her to come back as soon as she had the drugs, so she wound her way through the hospital, taking the path that normally had the least amount of people. Bane's mercenaries gave her a nod when she left the hospital. Barsad was waiting for her at the corner of the street with his distant smile and vacant eyes.

She did not look back.

000

Bane was not at the apartment when she got there and she set the bag of drugs gently on the counter before grabbing her sketchbook, the iPad Bane had gotten her, and a pair of headphones. She sat down at the counter, started pulling out the drugs and then she put the headphones in her ears and started up some music and pulled up the website called ' '.

Music helped her focus. Not just the music itself, but music and ear buds took her concentration and narrowed it like a beam of focused energy. Whatever she was working on became the only thing in the world, and she could focus for hours on the smallest of tasks with an eerie intensity.

She went to Google and typed in the name of the first drug on the counter.

She went steadily through the medicine, listing their side effects, the symptoms they were best at relieving, and recommended doses. She organized them by similarities and searched for what would happen when certain ones were combined. She read labs and academic reports; studies and experiments. She arranged the drugs in level of danger and rated them by their addictiveness and grouped them by the ones that seemed compatible.

A hand grasped her shoulder and she gave an involuntary and embarrassing shriek, pitching backwards off her chair as utter panic spread through her body. Her stomach flipped as she flew backwards and then, very suddenly, someone had grabbed her waist with big hands and was straightening her out, pulling her gently to her feet.

Her back was pressed against something solid and breathing and there were large, very warm hands on her waist. Her heart was pounding; the ear buds had fallen out and she heard Bane's mechanical rasp that served as breath. Her stomach was still flipping. His hands were much too warm.

"Careful," he said, his mechanical voice amiable in her ear.

"Thanks," she said, and stepped away from him. His hands fell away from her waist as she turned to face him. His grey eyes seemed very dark.

Not for the first time, she remembered that, for all of the other things he was, he was also a man.

She took another step back, wanting some distance between them, and his eyes did not change. The warmth in her belly was entirely unwelcome.

"I got your medicine," she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. "I started doing some research, about the different side effects and possible combinations and all that."

"Good." His mechanical voice was pleased but his eyes were still so dark, with something behind them that she hadn't seen before. "When will you be ready to test the medication on a live subject?"

For a few seconds she stared at him, uncomprehending. Then her jaw dropped.

"You want _me _to make it?"

"You will have assistance, of course."

"But I don't know anything about this kind of stuff, I'm not even that good at chemistry or anything like that-"

His eyes were amused. "You underestimate your own intelligence, my dear."

"No, I really don't. I know exactly how smart I am, and I don't think I can do this."

"I have faith in you."

"What makes you think I won't make it to kill you? Or even if I don't do it on purpose, how do you know I won't mess up or something, and hurt you-"

"Because," he said, his mechanical voice light, "I know where your friends are. And your family. The _Richards, _aren't they? A good idea, to change their names, but not good enough to hide from me and mine. And, if anything happens to me, _mine _are under orders to bring you _yours._"

He turned from her and walked down the hallway, turning back to look at her when he reached his room.

"In pieces."

000

The man who Bane had helping her came into the apartment early the next morning, and Katty started and stared from her spot at the counter when he stepped out of the elevator. He was black, very handsome, and probably somewhere in his forties. The look her gave her was measured and calculating but not unkind.

"Hello," she said, slowly. He gave her a nod.

"You are the girl?"

"Call me Katty. What's your name?"

"Ezra." His voice was very deep and had a melodic accent that she found comforting and curious. He moved over to her and looked over her shoulder at her notes and at all the bottles of medicine in front of her. His eyes were the color of honey and he was wearing the same sort of clothes that most of Bane's people had; they were militaristic, practical, and dull, all olive greens and grays and browns and they did not suit this man. She felt his eyes move from her make-shift set up to her face.

"You have done this before?"

"Made drugs?" She gave a short, humorless laugh. "No."

"Why is he having you do this, then? It is not a simple or safe process, for the maker _or_ the taker."

She shrugged. "I don't know. Some sort of test, I think. If I screw up, he's going to kill everyone I love, so no pressure, right?"

His eyes searched hers.

"Let us go to work, then."

And they did work. They worked for the rest of the day, falling into an easy pattern and a startling intensity. They talked occasionally and Katty, knowing her own limitations, deferred to him in any occasion that there was a difference of opinion.

They worked well together and soon enough had several prototypes of drugs to be tested. Ezra told Katty that he could only help her for today; that was all Bane would allow him. Katty had to stifle anger and panic at that; did the masked psychopath _want _her to fail?

But Ezra knew what he was doing. He knew about drugs and mixing and side-effects and which chemicals would cancel each other out; he knew what to mix with oxycodone to give a longer high; he knew how to convert halothane into a liquid form and he knew how to administer their Frankenstein's monster of a creation to a subject so that it would last as long as possible.

"Have you done this before?" Katty asked, handing him a syringe with hands in gloves that were far to big for her.

"Yes," said Ezra in his slow, calming voice.

"For Bane?"

"No. But, in another life, I was a mixer of potions for a variety of needs."

"By- by potions, you mean-"

Those amber colored eyes met hers and his lips twitched. It was nice to see a smile, she realized, grinning back at him. "I mean drugs."

"Ah."

There were a few minutes of silence.

"Do you mind if I ask how you got tied up with Bane?"

Something in Ezra's eyes became very sad and he poured a fine powder of crushed tablets into a beaker over the stove.

"I lived in Ethiopia, ten years ago. My wife- Nirhya- and I had five children. We never had much money and I did not have the luxury of being careful with my choice of employment. The potions I made kept my wife and my two daughters from the horror of the sex trade. I refuse to apologize for that."

Katty listened, very still, and watched him. His dark brows furrowed together.

"But it made some people in that business angry, to have two young girls of such incredible beauty kept from them. They came to my home and took my girls. My wife was killed. My boys and I went to the League for help; they were, uh… more well known in that part of the world. In exchange for the lives of my daughters, I had to pledge myself to the League."

"Do you regret it?" Katty asked quietly.

"No," said Ezra, a little forcefully, his eyes flashing to hers. "I did not think I would be capturing a city, but no. I do not regret it."

Katty nodded slowly, and turned back to the boiling liquid on the stove.

"What about you?" She glanced back up at him. He was smiling. "How does a pretty girl like you find yourself captive to a madman?"

Her smile was biting and proud and bitter. "I tried to fight back."

Ezra raised an eyebrow and Katty drew in a breath; he moved the clear liquid in its beaker off the stove, swirling it around and examining it before looking back at her.

"The night after, that first night, someone broke into my house. Me and my family lived out west, out past the suburbs, near the docks. We got about two acres of land a few years back for a really, really great discount, we'd never have been able to afford it otherwise. So it looks like we have money, and we really don't. That night, our house got broken into. It was just one guy and he came upstairs and I woke up at three thirty-seven in the morning to my sister's screams."

_Jolting out of sleep, realizing it wasn't a nightmare-_

_-red numbers on the alarm clock, burned into her mind-_

_-the knife, get the knife-_

"I've always been sort of paranoid, especially after the Joker attacks eight years ago, so I sleep with a knife by my bed. I grabbed it and ran to my sister's room and there was this- this man, trying to get on top of her, and she was fighting, and I just grabbed him and stuck the knife in at the base of his head before I could even think about it. And then I tried to call the police, before I remembered that there was no one to answer. And then I knew that something had to done and I- well, I didn't know if anyone else would do it, so I did.

"The next day I started going around to houses, taking clothes and food and stuff so it'd look like I had a reason. I told them I was fighting back and to meet in one of the parking garages that night. Word spreads fast. Within a couple of days, there were three, four hundred people. And the crowd grew every night. I didn't mean for to be the leader of it, it just happened. People asked me what to do, where to strike, and someone had to be in charge. I knew what it meant. I told my family I had to leave and I started sleeping in abandoned apartments. My three best friends stayed with me; we were the leaders and we took care of our people. And one day we were out, the four of us, trying to find some food and medicine for a guy with a bad leg, and the next thing I knew I was being dragged off by some guy and I shouted at my friends to run right before they put a bag over my head. Then Bane took me." She shrugged.

"How old are you?" Ezra asked quietly.

"I'm twenty."

"So young," he said softly, "to be the revolutionary."

She felt awkward and proud at the same time. "Someone had to."

His smile was tight as he looked away from her, back to the clear liquid.

"And that is what makes you a hero."

000

_Hero._

The word echoed in her head and it rested uncomfortably on her tongue and it sounded stale when she spoke it to the empty apartment.

There were vials and syringes on the counter and she played with one of them, twisting it over and over in her short fingers, watching the liquid inside of it shift and slide.

_Hero._

She'd always wanted to be a hero. Not for fame or money or glory, but for something else, something much older, something without a name. She wanted to save people, just for the sake of saving them. She didn't know why, but she thought, sometimes, that it had something to do with the black hole inside of her; maybe if she filled that hole with enough lives, enough good deeds, maybe it would go away. She knew, of course, that this was not the case; this was not how life worked. There were no cosmic deals. But she still wanted to be a hero, and now she was.

She didn't think it with any sort of arrogance. It was, simply:

_"I'm blonde."_

_"I have blue eyes."_

_"I miss London."_

_"I'm a hero."_

It was just another thing, now, another part of what she was. She accepted it easily but she did not feel changed. Not like she'd hoped she would.

She glanced over the drugs; there was quite a lot. There were a few different combinations, each attached to a different sheet of paper with very specific instructions so that she could recreate it without Ezra's help.

She did not expect to see the older man again.

Then there were the methods of distribution. There was a pump, similar to the insulin pumps that some diabetics wore, but Katty couldn't see Bane going for that. It would be too easy to disable, and she didn't know if he was planning on going maskless all the time, if he was going to fight without it.

No, she thought he'd go with the injection. It was more his style; efficient and simple. She didn't know how quickly he'd burn through the medicine, though. She realized she'd have to do tests on him and felt a sudden surge of almost sadistic glee.

_I'll need to know his weight, _she thought, the wheels in her mind spinning, _and how much pain he can tolerate-_

She realized that this went far beyond just making the medicine and suddenly felt very tired.

000

She was sitting on the couch when Bane came back to the apartment, Oxycodone buzzing through her bloodstream and leaving her feeling warm and content. She had the iPad on her lap and was watching movies that the previous owner had uploaded onto it; even living in a city under siege, it was difficult to not crack up at the antics of Abbott and Costello.

When Bane stepped off of the elevator and into the apartment, his big boots thudding quietly, Katty had her head thrown back, her neck arched and her mouth in an open grin, shaking in loud, genuine laughter; it was the first time she'd really laughed since she'd been taken. She noticed Bane but ignored him, wanting this one moment of normality to last for as long as it could. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed him shrug out of that massive brown jacket and throw it over one of the chairs, and knew he was watching her.

Eventually her laughs subsided, leaving her belly and back sore, and she wiped tears from the corner of her eyes.

"_Wow," _she said, her voice shaking a little, still grinning. "That was _funny."_

"Did you finish your work with the good doctor?"

"Yeah. I've got a couple of new medicines to test out, so I need to know your pain threshold, like, how much pain can you handle before you need the mask, and your weight, so I can do some tests to see which medicine is the most effective and how much you'll need to take."

She met his gaze. His gray eyes above the black mask were quiet and measuring and she was reminded suddenly of the sky just before a storm broke.

"I don't know how much I weigh."

She laced her fingers behind her head. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me. I need you to find out, though, so I don't overdose you. Don't want you dying on me."

Those grey eyes crinkled up in what she knew was his smile. "Have I inspired some affection in you, girl?"

"No," said Katty, flatly. "I'm keeping my family alive."

"Not your friends?"

"They are family."

His invisible smile widened. "Shame. I had hoped you'd begun to feel some sort of loyalty."

She gave him a look and then continued. "I'll probably need to do the first trial on a rat, or something. Can one of your people bring me one?"

His eyes searched hers.

"There will be one for you in the morning. Get some sleep."

000

"Sorry, little guy," said Katty softly as she pushed the needle into the top of the rat's thigh and injected the medicine into him. He hopped away as soon as she let him go and licked the entry point, then gave her a look as though to say, _is that all?_

"For now," she told him, and pushed him into a carrier.

"Are you so desperate for company you'd talk to a rodent?" Bane's mechanical voice was amused behind her.

"Gotta have an intelligent conversation somehow," she said with a mock cheerfulness, and put her head on her hands on the counter, watching the rat. He didn't seem to be reacting to the medicine at all and suddenly she felt Bane at her side, leaning on the counter and watching the rat too. He was much too close; she could feel the heat radiating off of his big body. His mask hissed and then he spoke.

"How do you expect the testing to proceed?"

She watched as the rat started to groom himself. "First, I want to make sure none of the drugs kill him. I need to see how they effect him, if they slow him down or make him sleepy or any of that." She frowned. "I should probably record his heartbeat."

There were a few moments of quiet as she thought and watched the rat. "Then I'll have to play with the dosage and all that according to how he responds to it. Then- then I'll have to see if the drugs make him able to function when he's in pain."

"And how will you do that?"

She looked at the rat, now cleaning his tail. "Break his leg and give him a shot."

The rat became very relaxed while on the medicine, but apart from that, there was no change. She waited eight hours for the effects to wear off, and gave him the second drug. It made him significantly slower and sluggish and so she decided to lessen the dosage when she did the "pain trial". The third drug was the one that seemed to be most efficient; the rat's heart rate slowed only a little and he seemed calm but very alert. She wrote everything down, even the things that seemed unimportant. She recorded the dosage she'd used (thanks to basic algebra and Google, figuring it out had been one of the easy parts), the rat's actions, when she noticed the medicine beginning to take effect; anything that seemed slightly relevant went down in writing and she stared at her notes when she was done, reading them over and over with head phones and music in her ears.

_If I survive this, at least I'll be able to get a job as a dealer or a mixer_, she thought to herself. The rat twitched his nose at her.

She couldn't do it. She couldn't break the little guy's leg; she'd known she wouldn't be able to since the moment she'd first realized she had to. She'd had to ask Bane to do it and he'd given her that measuring, calculating gaze.

"Are you incapable?" he'd rumbled at her.

"Of hurting something like this? Yes." There was no shame in her voice. His eyes searched her face.

"You truly are good," he said after a few moments, his voice a low rumble and his eyes very dark. "Down to your core. What a strange thing."

She'd started but before she could say anything, he'd moved over to the rat and there was a crack and squealing.

She followed him and grabbed the third drug, injecting it into the squirming and squealing rat's thigh. Bane held the rat as still as possible and Katty set the syringe gingerly on the counter before grabbing the iPad.

"Keep holding him," she told Bane and felt his eyes on her as she did a quick Google search.

Fifteen minutes later the rat was much calmer and he had a splint on his front left leg made out of cotton bandages, surgical tape and several toothpicks. Bane's big hands were still grasping the warm, wriggling body.

"Okay," said Katty, pushing her blonde hair out of her eyes. "You can let him go."

With a surprising gentleness, Bane set the rat on the counter. He sniffed at his leg, licked it a few times, and then looked up at Katty, his whiskers twitching.

"Go on," she told him. "Walk."

And, a few minutes later, he did. His movements were awkward, thanks to the splint, but he seemed to move without pain and ate the food Katty offered him. She looked over at the masked mercenary to find his dark eyes already on her.

"I think we have a winner," she said softly.

000

She didn't sleep that night. She changed the drugs out as needed and recorded everything, and early the next morning, when Bane came into the kitchen shirtless, she looked at him and held up vial number three.

"We definitely have a winner."

He looked at the vial with unreadable eyes and his mask hissed. "Good. What do you need next?"

"Your weight," she said flatly. "So I know how much to give you, to see if it works."

Good night, he was _massive. _Most guys towered over Katty, it was just part of being as short as she was, but she was still struck by the incredible size difference between them. It wasn't just the height, either; he was muscular in a way she didn't expect to see in real life. And his body was riddled with scars, though that part didn't surprise her as much.

He gave her a nod after a few minutes of silence, and when he turned, she saw that the scar at the base of his skull extended down his spine.

She realized why he needed the mask.

He left the apartment and came back two hours later with his weight and she quickly did a few equations and Google searches before coming up with a dosage.

"Alright," she said, holding up the syringe. "Come here."

He quirked an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his now (thankfully) covered chest, but he made no move to her.

"Bane, come on, we don't know if it'll work unless we try it on you."

"Yes, we do," he said mildly. "I'm hardly the only two hundred and twenty pound man in the city.

For a few seconds she stared at him in confusion and then it clicked.

"No," she said.

"Oh? Shall I bring you your family, then?"

"I'm not going to experiment on _people_-"

"-or your friends, they're all quite beautiful." His eyes burned and she closed her mouth.

"Fine," she said, her voice very hard. "Fine. Go find someone. Offer them food in exchange, or something, and I'll need a lab with access to some medical supplies."

He raised his eyebrow again.

"Testing on a human is not like testing on a rat," she snapped. He lifted his hands out to his side and gave her a deep nod.

"As you wish."

000

He took her to an abandoned pediatrician's office and then left with two of his men, pausing at the door to look back at her. His mask hissed and his voice, when he spoke, was a mechanical rasp.

"I don't think I need to remind you what happens if you try to escape."

She clutched at the strap of her back across her chest and gave him a flat, hard glare. "No, I got it. Thanks."

After a moment, he nodded, and then they were gone and she was alone. She pulled Google up on the iPad that was very quickly becoming her lifeline and began gathering supplies. Cotton swabs, disinfectant, band aids, a stethoscope and the arm cuff for blood pressure. Then she started doing research on the best way to give a shot, how to clean it, and how to measure a person's vital signs.

About two hours later, Bane returned alone. She rose to her feet slowly, setting the iPad down, and raised her eyebrows.

"Change your mind?" she asked him. His eyes were very dark.

"No," he said. She heard shouts, male shouts, one of which was very familiar, and stared from Bane to the door and back again.

"What-"

"They were slightly less than willing," he said, his mechanical voice light. Katty stared at him.

"You said you would _pay_ them with something-" her voice was rising.

"This was easier."

She stared at him in utter disbelief and then his two mercenaries burst through the door, shoving two men to the ground, both looking like they were around Bane's weight, both with bags over her head.

She had a violent flashback to her own abduction and her eyes flashed back to Bane's.

"What the _hell _is wrong with you?"

He spread his hands wide, his eyebrows lifting in an expression of mock innocence. "You needed live subjects, my dear, and I have supplied you with them. Take off the bags."

The mercenaries yanked off the bags and Katty had to choke back a strangled scream as the boy kneeling on the right was revealed.

It was her brother.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"O Sister" by City and Color

A/N: WHOOHOOO AND HERE. WE. _GO._

As always, thank you guys so much for your reviews! I always get really excited when i see a new one, so you are definitely appreciated.

I started to do a bunch of research for this chapter and then I decided to do only the research that the character did. I read something once that an author shouldn't include more factual information in a story than the character knows, so I pretty much relied on my own knowledge (I AM NOT A DRUG DEALER, I PROMISE), common sense, and basic Googling. It was very interesting to write!

How do you guys think the Sexual Tension is building? I definitely want it to be slow burn because I love building it up. Tell me what you think!

Love,

Paradisical


	8. Light

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_Come away little lass  
Come away to the water  
To the ones that are waiting only for you  
Come away little lass  
Come away to the water  
Away from the life that you always knew  
We are calling to you  
Come away little light  
Come away to the darkness  
In the shade of the night we'll come looking for you  
Come away little light  
Come away to the darkness  
To the ones appointed to see it through  
We are calling for you  
We are coming for you_

_Come away little lamb_  
_Come away to the water_  
_Give yourself so we might live anew_  
_Come away little lamb_  
_Come away to the slaughter_  
_To the ones appointed to see this through_

**Chapter Eight: Light**

She felt complete and utter panic flooding through her veins and for a terrifying heartbeat she could do nothing but stare at her seventeen-year old brother, kneeling on the ground between her and the door. His blue eyes, a masculine mirror of hers, stared back, wide in confusion and horror. For a few seconds, she could not think, she could not strategize; it didn't matter that she was putting her brother in danger by staring at him. All she felt was terror.

And then she snapped back to herself, suddenly, and tore her eyes from her brother, planting them on the other boy instead. She did not let herself look back at Nathaniel Sherman.

Bane's mask hissed. "You know these boys?" he asked, his tone very easy and masking something very dark.

"No," said Katty flatly.

The boys both started. Katty felt Bane's eyes on her.

"Interesting," he said mildly. "Shall we begin?"

She looked at the two men, standing on either side of Bane, both with large guns, and for a second, her heart stopped. She knew what she had to do.

"Yes," she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. "I need a gun, though."

Bane raised and eyebrow and the boys exchanged a wide-eyed look.

"I can hardly test out pain medicine if they aren't in pain, can I?" Katty snapped, extending a hand out to one of the guards. Bane's eyes searched her face for a moment, and then he jerked his head at one of the guards, who extended his gun out to Katty.

She took it with shaking hands. Adrenaline was beginning to fill her body; there was a rushing noise in her ears, her heart was pounding and her skin seemed to be vibrating.

"Is the safety off?" she asked the guard, calmly. He nodded.

"Good."

And then, faster than she'd have thought herself possible of, she raised the gun and shot him in the head. Blood and skull and brain matter spattered the wall behind him and he collapsed to the ground, but Katty was already turning to the other guard and she shot him too.

"Run!" she shouted at her brother, pointing the gun at Bane. "Go, now, run!"

She heard them behind her, moving, scrambling to their feet and running out of the room. She kept the gun trained at Bane, whose eyes had gone very dark, his body tensed up like a lion's.

"Are you going to shoot me, little girl?" he asked, his mechanical voice a low, dangerous rumble. "Do you think you can?"

"I shot _them_."

He said nothing. She pulled the trigger, and the gun clicked. She pulled it again.

It was empty.

For a heartbeat she and Bane just looked at each other. And then she chucked the gun at his head with all her strength before turning on her heel and running. She heard a clang, a grunt and a sudden rush of filtered air and knew she'd hit his mask.

She ran as fast as she could out of the building, her feet hitting the floor with incredible force and her arms pumping. She felt like she was flying and she heard her brother call her name when she was out in the cold.

"Kathryn!" he shouted, and she ran to him as fast as she could.

"Go!" she shouted, barreling past the two of them. "Keep running!"

They ran for five minutes, twisting and turning down the alleys and side streets before she stopped. She doubled over, panting, her hands on her knees, adrenaline still pounding through her.

"We have to split up," she panted, struggling for breath. "Nathaniel- you go- go off on your own, keep running, don't stop running, do you understand?"

He nodded and she suddenly grabbed him and pulled him in tightly for a hug.

"You can't go home," she said quietly. "Not for a few days. Keep moving, get a gun. Shoot anyone you think is following you, I love you."

She let go of him and pushed him back. "Go, now. Don't stop running. Go!"

And then he was running, very fast, and he disappeared within a matter of seconds. She could hear shouts in the distance, and knew that Bane's men were coming. She turned to the boy, who was staring at her with wide brown eyes.

"You, with me. Make as much noise as you can."

They were running and Katty knew they were being followed, but they were fast, both of them, without the gear that weighed down Bane's men.

"In here," Katty gasped, panting, and they turned, quickly, skidding into the door of an abandoned convenience store. She ran behind the counter and started pulling the drawers out with shaking hands, searching.

Two guns.

She checked the safety and made sure there were rounds in the barrel and then she tossed the first one to the boy.

"Use this," she ordered, and then she took the second gun, cocking it with a quick, jerking motion. "Get over here and get down."

They crouched behind the counter, waiting. Katty's heart was pounding.

And then it all went to hell.

Even weeks later, she wasn't able to figure out how the two men got in. All she knew was that one second she was crouching with the boy and the next a gloved hand had grabbed him by the hair and was pulling him up and then there was a bang that left her ears ringing and she was splattered in blood.

She didn't have time to scream; she didn't even have time to think. As the body of the boy fell beside her with a thud, there was a hand fisted in her hair, pulling her up, dragging her over the counter, her belly scraping against the uneven surface. Her fingers fumbled on the trigger and she fired, once, into empty air, and then a cruel hand was twisting her wrist; there was a crack and she screamed and the gun scattered to the floor. The hand in her hair yanked her head back and she felt hot breath on her neck.

"Remember me?" rasped a voice. Katty struggled, twisting and wiggling but she could not get away. The man slammed her against the wall and she saw his face; it was the man who'd punched her right after she'd first been claimed by Bane. His eyes were watery and small and he was grinning and his breath still stunk. There was another man behind him. Rat-Tails pulled out a knife.

"Never said thank you. For breaking my jaw."

She was too scared to say anything; her mind was frozen in terror. She knew that look in his eyes. She knew what was coming.

"No," she said involuntarily, her voice very weak. "No."

Rat-Tails' smile widened. "Yes," he breathed. He took the knife and, his eyes never leaving hers, traced it down her leg, deep enough to cut through her jeans and her skin and she felt blood flowing around the white hot point of pain.

"Bane said we weren't to hurt you when he took ya. But I don't think that still applies, do you?" He drove the knife in deeper and she inhaled sharply. "Do you think the boss still wants 'er, Jamie?"

"Doubt it." The other man had a British accent and he was staring at her with burning eyes.

"So you're all ours, pretty little bird."

She heard the jingle of a belt buckle and a zipper and she screwed her eyes closed. The knife pressed sharply against her thigh and began traveling up, up-

"No-"

"Yes." His breath was hot against her face. He used the knife and sliced down her shirt, baring her breasts in the plain beige bra and her soft belly and the breath he drew in was ragged. The knife moved and pressed against her right shoulder. She felt it, wiggling there, and then he very slowly began to push it through skin and muscle and she couldn't hold back a scream. He was panting and she felt a hand scrabbling at the front of her jeans. Blood was flowing down her bare chest, staining her bra, and then he pulled the knife out and she felt his mouth on her neck. The knife moved to her stomach and he began tracing it there, the point red hot where it cut into her skin.

"I bet you're a virgin," he was saying against her neck. "That's how Bane likes 'em, nice and innocent. He hasn't had you yet, though, I can tell… he'll just have to be disappointed."

"Please, stop- don't, please-"

"That't right. Say 'please' again."

The knife went into her left shoulder and she screamed again. Rat-Tails gave a groan.

Katty opened her eyes and he looked at her.

She took the only option left to her, the only way she could fight, and she spat in his face. He dug the knife in deeper and she screamed again, her eyes screwing shut involuntarily- there were a few seconds that were filled only with white hot pain and the sound tearing out of her throat and Rat Tails' panting and the lights dancing behind her eyelids-

Then there was a cracking, a solid thud, and a mechanical hiss. The revolting warmth of Rat Tails' body was torn away and she heard him shouting and pleading. She opened her eyes to see Bane, lifting him up by his throat. Reflexively, her hand scrabbled at her bloody throat until it close around her little silver cross and she held it, so tightly, something in her mind screaming. Rat Tails was sputtering and choking, his feet dangling a foot off the ground, and Bane's eyes were darker than she'd ever seen, stormy like the ocean before a hurricane, and so angry.

"I told you," he said, and his voice was like thunder and there was nothing mild or amiable about it now; it was cold and ancient and he was furious_, _"_she is_ _not to be harmed."_

There was a sickening crunch and Bane dropped the body to the side before, slowly, his burning eyes found hers. His breath seemed especially ragged and his eyes were so dark and she was so afraid. She met his gaze, her own breathing harsh and made ragged by pain. Part of her expected him to finish what they started, but he moved over to her slowly, and his hands were gentle on her skin when he touched her. He didn't ask if they'd hurt her, he didn't need to; there was a hole in one shoulder and a knife in the other; cuts on her belly and on her thigh. Her shirt was torn and she was covered in blood.

"Why- did you come for me? I would have killed you." Her voice was very weak.

"I knew you were going to kill them," he rumbled without looking at her. "The moment you asked for the gun, and I knew you would try to kill me. Luckily, I can count. Do not speak again; you are losing blood. Conserve your strength."

He grabbed her gently above her right elbow and quickly pulled out the knife. She whimpered, her knees buckling suddenly, and he caught her, quickly taking her shirt off of her and tearing it in two, pressing a half against each shoulder wound.

"Hold these," he ordered, and helped her sit, leaning against the wall. There was no strength in her arms but she held the fabric where it was as he moved to the counter. He came back a moment later with a first aid kit and taped the fabric against her skin to stifle the bleeding. She watched his face, breathing slowly, her mouth open. She realized, almost distantly, that she was going into shock. Her teeth were chattering.

Bane finished and pulled his massive brown coat off his shoulders and then, with one hand, pulled her to her feet and with a single motion, draped his coat over her shoulders. She was shaking and stared at the two bodies.

Wordlessly, he lifted her into his arms. She did not protest and found herself clutching at his soft black shirt while she swam in his coat. Unbidden, she thought of the first night she'd been with him, when he'd stumbled in, covered in blood and his hands shaking, when she'd helped him.

They were moving. He did not speak but she could feel his heartbeat as much as she could hear it.

Her last thought, before she blacked out, was that his heartbeat sounded like the beating of war drums.

000

She woke up with her back pressed against something solid and smooth and cold. There was a light shining in her eyes and her skin felt very distant, somehow. Something was tugging gently at her left shoulder and she squinted, seeing a pair of big hands quickly pulling a thread through her skin.

"Oh," she said, her voice hoarse. "Oh."

Bane's eyes did not leave the wound. Katty remembered that she'd tried to kill him and her eyes searched his face, but it was unreadable in the harsh light. His hands were moving quickly and deftly. She felt no pain.

"You lost an impressive amount of blood." His voice was quiet. She had no idea what to say. "I didn't know if you would live."

"Why did you come for me?" her voice was raspy and low. She cleared her throat; it was very dry. "I would have killed you."

He didn't look at her until he finished stitching up the hole in her shoulder and then he covered it with a bandage, taping the edges down; the other was already bandaged. His hands were warm where they touched her skin, and very gentle.

When he did look at her his eyes were unreadable above the mask. "Your medicine works. I used your calculations to determine the dosage you needed. How do you feel?"

She thought about it for a minute. She felt good; a little groggy, but that might have been the blood loss. She could feel his hands on her skin but she felt no pain.

"Good," she said finally, her eyes flashing up to his. "I feel… good."

For a moment he said nothing. Then-

"Good."

There were a few moments of silence and they just looked at each other. Katty was disarmed and she felt something shifting between them; the dam had broken when she'd tried to kill him, it was the climax, and this was them coming down. Something was changing.

"Why did you come back for me?" she asked him again, her voice soft, and for just a second, something behind his eyes cracked. There was a second where some sort of wall came down and then he blinked.

"There are several reasons," he said, and his mechanical voice was again calm and amiable and it didn't match his eyes in the slightest. "The most honest of which is that I need you for the medicine."

She gave a nod and waited. His eyes searched hers and he seemed to be thinking, considering options and making plans.

"The other is that I find you… interesting," he said, his eyes burning, leaning forward slightly.

"Are we talking, like… pet gerbil interesting?"

_Add to side effects: extreme stupidity._

She couldn't tell, but it looked like he was smiling.

"Something along those lines, yes."

"Well, as long as that's all."

They looked at each other for another second and Katty realized that she was actually smiling at him; not the hard, biting grimace that normally twisted her lips in his presence, but a genuine smile.

_Wow. I did a __**really**__ good job with these drugs._

Very slowly, she tried to sit up and immediately screwed her eyes shut, her head spinning. She heard Bane shift but he made no sound. Then, with her eyes still closed, she twisted her body slowly so that her legs dangled off the table.

And realized that she was wearing only her underwear and a towel over her breasts that was held in place thanks solely to how big they were. Her eyes flew open and she stared at Bane.

"It had to be done," he said simply, and there was no apology in his grey eyes. "I invaded your privacy as little as possible."

She looked at him for a minute, her gaze measuring, and then she nodded.

"Alright."

She tried to stand and stumbled, her head spinning and her chest going cold. She held an arm across her breasts to keep the towel where it was and she felt Bane's hands on her, supporting her. Everything was spinning and her vision was fading around the edges; it was hard to breathe. His voice sounded from very far away.

"Kathryn. Kathryn, listen to me."

She realized that it was the first time he'd actually said her name.

"Need- t' lie down-"

He picked her up again as though she was nothing but a doll and she kept her eyes screwed close, trying to anchor herself against his arms or his chest or anything. Her world kept spinning as they moved.

"Stand up for just a minute."

"I don't-"

"You can." His mechanical voice was calm. She opened her eyes but her vision was completely black so she shut them again and slowly, she felt him turn her vertical, and then her feet touched the ground. She pitched forward but he grabbed her, gently, and held her steady from the back.

"Lift your arms up," he ordered. "I can't see anything."

She did so, too dizzy and weak to argue, and she felt a shirt sliding over her arms and her head and then she was in his arms again.

"Happens- happens to me- sometimes-"

Her teeth were chattering. He was moving her and then she felt the bed underneath her, soft and steady but it felt like it was moving. She clenched her hands into fists, grabbing the sheets, trying to anchor herself. The bed dipped on the other side.

"You're in shock, and the blood loss is catching up to you. You need to sleep."

His voice was to her left and suddenly she knew which way was up again; she was anchored by that raw, mechanical thunder.

She gave a jerky nod. "Sounds… good."

After a few minutes, her body started to equalize itself. It became easier to breath and the world stopped spinning, and when she opened her eyes, she could see snow falling against the night sky outside her window. She heard Bane's mechanical breathing next to her and turned to look at him, her brow furrowing. He was sitting on the bed next to her, leaning against the headboard, his hands folded on his stomach and his legs crossed at the ankles.

"Are you- are you _staying?"_

"I spent the majority of my day saving your life. It would be extremely counterproductive if you were to die in your sleep." He looked down at her and his mask hissed. "So yes, I'm staying."

Her stomach jolted and she stared at him for a minute, but the dizzy episode had left her weak and exhausted and she didn't have the energy to argue. And, she figured, she'd tried to kill him and he'd still saved her. Just this once, she'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Just… don't snore."

She wormed her way gingerly under the covers, careful not to aggravate her wounds, noticing for the first time that her right wrist was splinted and taped, and she turned her back towards him so that she was facing the window. She tried to pull the covers up over her ear so that she was cocooned in them but the blanket went taut. She gave up and nestled her head deeper into her pillow.

She was asleep within seconds.

000

Bane waited until her breathing was deep and quiet and even before he looked down at her. She was just a lump, wrapped so entirely in the blankets that only the top of her head was showing in the moonlight. He watched her for a few minutes, just thinking.

_What a curious thing you are._

000

She felt the pain before she woke up. There was a burning in her wrist and every breath caused fire to shoot through her chest; the weight of the blankets on her leg and stomach were painfully heavy.

When she woke up entirely the room was filled with the gray light of pre-dawn and she found herself flat on her back and was extremely unwilling to move. It wasn't that the position was particularly comfortable so much as that it didn't hurt and she knew movement would send the pain spiking through her. But she had to move.

She looked to her left and saw that Bane was gone and that she was alone and felt a rush of relief, and then she looked to her right. On the bedside table there was a bottle of water, a note, three pills and a banana. Very gingerly, she pulled herself upright, wincing and hissing at the pain as she did so. She grabbed the water first and drank out of it in long gulps, gasping for breath after she swallowed. Her throat felt raw and scratched. She grabbed the note, next, and was surprised at Bane's writing. Somehow, she'd expected an archaic sort of cursive or the neatness of a typewriter; it was neither. It was a messy scrawl. She liked it; it made him a little more human.

_Drink the water and take the pills. There are two oxycodone and an iron supplement that will help replenish the blood you lost. If you don't feel nauseous, eat the banana. Go back to sleep. I'll return sometime in the afternoon._

There was no signature. She seriously considered moving to the couch just to spite him, but her burning and aching chest was very much against that plan. So she took the three pills and washed each down with massive gulps and she slowly ate the banana. When all that was left was a peel, she was beginning to feel drowsy and relaxed.

She nestled back into the pillow and this time she could pull the blankets up as high as she liked. She felt herself drifting off, her heart beating solidly in her chest, her breaths soft and even.

She dreamt of her friends, her three golden friends, and of the ocean, dark and cold and deep and eternal and kind.

000

Katty awoke in a rush just a few hours after she'd fallen asleep, and she had no idea what had jerked her out up sleep until she saw the figure sitting at her feet. It was not Bane.

It was Talia al Ghul.

Katty stared for a moment, not really understanding what she was seeing, not even when Talia gave a kind smile that didn't exactly reach her eyes. The high dosage of Oxycodone was still rushing through her blood and she was very relaxed, almost giddy in a detached sort of way.

"Um," she said, her voice groggy. "I don't think… Bane's here, right now."

Talia's smile widened. There was something very sad about that smile, Katty thought. "I know. I'm here to see you."

She had an accent, too, that Katty realized was a female equivalent of Bane's. It was clipped and lilting and exotic and it changed, too, twisting differently over vowels than it did over consonants.

_What happened to these two?_

"Uh… why?"

"To give some advice."

"Which would be… what?"

That small smile stayed on Talia's lips as her dark eyes searched Katty's face. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and kind and friendly and Katty didn't trust her at all.

"Bane has always had a fascination with innocence and the ways it manifests itself in people. He used to think that innocence should be protected, at all costs, that the innocence of a child could be a man's redemption… but that belief has faded, over the years. Now he is simply curious. It is a project to him, a science, to see this innocence, and test it."

Katty didn't have to ask Talia whom Bane was testing now.

"Tell me," continued Talia, her dark eyes much older than the rest of her, "has he tried to break you yet?"

For a few seconds Katty was quiet. Then-

"Yes, I think so."

Talia's smile was sad. "Once he would have done anything to protect you."

"Is that what he did for you?"

Talia sat up a little straighter and gave Katty an odd look. "You are smarter than you look."

Katty tried to shrug but it hurt so she just gave a strange nod. "It isn't hard to figure out."

"Yes, a long time ago. He protected me, and I saved him."

"So what happened? Why isn't he… protecting me?"

"That time has passed," said Talia simply. "He is more complicated now, than he was, all those years ago."

"Then why is he trying to break me?"

Talia leaned closer to her then and brushed her hair out of her eyes, very gently, like a mother to a child. "Because he wants to see you outlast him. He wants to believe that something good can withstand the battering of evil, that some innocence can remain."

Katty drew in a breath. "What if he's wrong? What if I'm not innocent, or… or good?"

"Are you?"

"I'm not innocent," she said quietly. "I've got four people's blood on my hands, as well as certain… other things."

"And are you good?"

There were a few moments of quiet. "I don't know. But- why does it matter- why is he… testing me?"

Talia's eyes were dark.

"Because he has long ago abandoned the idea of redemption for himself. He no longer thinks it possible for a man like him to be made whole, and it doesn't bother him that he is beyond redemption. But… somewhere, deep down, he would like to believe that someone _else_ can be saved. And I think he wants it to be you."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Come Away To The Water" by Maroon Five

A/N: Just FYI, Come Away To The Water is the unofficial theme song of this story. It fits it in just about every way. Also, HOW WAS THIS FOR SOME ACTION? IT JUST SORT OF EXPLODES IN YOUR FACE but I'm actually really happy with the way it turned out. The not!rape scene was really difficult for me to write.

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated and much flailed over! What sort of songs do you think go well with this story? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Paradisical


	9. False Normalcy

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_Human behave yourself,  
you have burst at the seam  
let it all fall out open your mouth  
often I lie wide awake, think of things I  
can make but I don't seem to have the  
parts to build them  
Human, I wonder why you're a better  
make than I could ever build or create,  
you know not love or hate  
I am so scared of what will kill me in the  
end for I am not prepared, i hope I will  
get the chance to be someone, to be  
human, look what we've done, look what  
we've done_

**Chapter Nine: False Normalcy**

"That _hurts_," Katty hissed, her eyes flashing.

"It will hurt more if your tendons don't heal properly," said Bane calmly. "Stop complaining."

It turned out her wrist wasn't broken after all but it was sprained quite spectacularly and now that she could use it without excruciating pain, Bane had insisted that she exercise it. Which meant anything from writing over and over to punching him in the stomach (she wouldn't have minded that part except he was built like a brick shithouse and it _hurt_) to holding still and keeping her mouth shut while he slowly bent her hand backwards.

In the past three days, their dynamic had shifted. Katty figured attempting-to-kill-and-having-life-saved-by a person tended to change the relationship a little, but it was still weird. She didn't feel comfortable around him and she didn't like him, not by a long shot, but now she owed him. She'd have owed him anyway, just for him saving her life, but him saving her in _spite _of her trying to kill him?

It didn't excuse anything, not really. He was still a psychopath with the blood of hundreds on his hands and he'd still taken her captive and threatened her friends and family. They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, even. She didn't know when or how but she did know a score would have to be settled one day between them.

But she still owed him and that weight lay between them and they had no choice but to shift around it.

"Be _still_," he ordered, his eyes flashing at her. He was grasping her right hand in both of his, one hand pressed against the back of her palm and the other gently pushing back her fingers. "Keep your fingers rigid."

"It _hurts._"

He gave her an extremely unimpressed look and she thought of the scar on his back. Three seconds later, he released her hand and she cradled it to her chest.

"Freaking- _ow-_"

"How are the wounds in your shoulders healing?"

"Pretty good, I guess. They still hurt like a bitch, but it's getting better and they aren't infected or anything, so I think they're alright."

He gave a nod. "Good. Are you able to change the bandages yourself?"

"Yeah, I got it."

Truth be told, it was awkward to clean and bandage the stitching in her shoulders, but the alternative was taking her shirt of in front of Bane. She disliked the fact that he'd seen her very close to naked once enough, and she'd been unconscious for that. She wasn't going to repeat it if it was at all avoidable.

He gave another nod and moved away from her, grabbing the coat that he'd put over her shoulders when she'd been broken and bleeding. She hesitated.

"Um… I… could I maybe go back to the hospital today?"

He pulled the coat on over his arms and looked at her, wordlessly, his eyes very grey above the mask.

"It's just… it's been three days. All I have for company is you and the rat." She gestured at his carrier. "It'd be nice to have a… distraction, or something."

"Are you having flashbacks?"

His voice was incredibly matter of fact. She drew in a steadying breath as she looked into his grey eyes.

"Little bit, yeah."

For a moment he was quiet, and his eyes above the mask gave away nothing. When he spoke, his voice was as mechanical and hard as ever but there was something gentle underneath it that never would have been there before.

"If you wish, you may go back in two days. Give your wounds time to heal. Let your body rest."

"It's not just my body that needs to heal," she said, very quietly, looking away from him. She didn't want to tell him how bad it was, to be alone, that she would shake so hard her teeth would chatter, that she'd only be able to see that man's eyes. She didn't need to tell him that it was so bad she even preferred his company over being alone because at least he was a distraction.

She didn't tell him, but she didn't need to.

He looked at her for a minute, his gray eyes searching her face, and she couldn't bring herself to look at him.

"And I don't wanna sleep," she mumbled. "Cause I'll dream."

She heard him inhale, a deep, mechanical rasp. "I won't be gone long."

She didn't move until she heard the elevator doors slide shut and then she went to the couch and curled herself up into a ball on it, staring with wide eyes at the window. She didn't want to fall asleep. She didn't want to think and she really didn't want to remember but her mind was her own worst enemy and she felt his breath on her neck and his hands on her stomach-

She screwed her eyes closed and grabbed her cross.

000

It wasn't the first nightmare, and it wasn't the worst. She was running, and she didn't know who it was from; first it was the Joker and then it was Bane and then it was Rat Tails, and she could only hear their breathing, only knew who it was by their breathing, and she was in Gotham, running, and she was alone in the streets, too scared to scream for help-

Then it changed, and she heard deep mechanical breaths, and then a voice, calling her name.

"_Kathryn. Kathryn."_

She woke with a start and a gasp, jerking backwards and then hissing in pain as the movement sent pain spiking through her body. There were hands on her face and she panicked for a moment before her eyes focused and she saw Bane's gray eyes above the mask and her panic calmed.

_Who'd have thought?_

For a second she thought she saw something like worry in his eyes and Talia's words came back to her in a rush but then she blinked and his eyes were the same as they always were; still and gray and burning.

"You were dreaming," he said, his voice amiable.

"Yeah," said Katty. "I noticed."

His hands were still on her face and they remained there a moment longer before they fell back to his sides and he straightened up to his full height. Katty ran a hand over her face, trying to clear the lingering panic of the dream away, and straightened up too.

"What time is it?"

"Late afternoon. You should eat."

And then, just like that, he disappeared down the hallway and into his room.

Katty felt sort of put out.

"Good to see you too," she muttered.

She wouldn't tell him that just having someone with her in the apartment eased a bit of the stress; that having Bane around, as disagreeable as it may be in other ways, gave her something to focus on that did not cause PTSD flashbacks.

She rose slowly to her feet, wincing. Her jeans scraped over the cuts on her legs and her bra straps shifted against the bandages on her shoulders, but at least the shirt was big enough that it didn't irritate the cuts on her stomach.

"I am a mess," she muttered to herself, retrieving her iPad and headphones before raiding the fridge.

"Spaghetti," she mumbled with incredibly little enthusiasm as she leaned on the door of the fridge, "bananas. Water."

She closed her eyes.

"You know, normal people need to eat meat sometimes! Some protein would be nice-"

"No need to shout." His voice was amused behind her and she gave a yelp before leaning entirely on the door for support, her heart pounding.

"_Why _do you sneak up on me?"

His chuckle was low and mechanical. "Would you believe me if I said it was funny?"

She turned to look at him, crossing her arms very gingerly over her chest, and it was true; his eyes were crinkled up. "Actually, yes. You're the kind of guy who thinks it's funny to scare the daylights out of people, so you would think it's funny to terrify someone who is currently not at the peak of mental stability."

His quirked eyebrow very clearly questioned whether she was ever at the peak of mental stability and she gave him a glare that she knew was not at all impressive.

"Seriously, can I get some meat? Also, you never told me how you eat."

"We can go check some of the stores, if you'd like."

She raised an eyebrow. "We?"

"I was under the impression you wanted to get out, but I can go alone if you'd rather stay here."

His voice was a challenge and she examined him for a few seconds with a distrustful look on her face and then she gave a quick nod. "Let me get my boots on."

She came back into the living room where he was waiting for her, gingerly shrugging into her coat, and she frowned, thinking.

"I didn't know there were even stores open anymore."

"There are," he said as they stepped onto the elevator. "Some restaurants, too. Even a few movie theatres."

'Movie theatres' sounded extremely strange in his mechanical tone and she looked up at him as the elevator began sliding down.

"Are people still working?"

His grey eyes were amused. "Some of them."

"But I thought that… is anyone _paying _them?"

He shrugged. "I assume some are."

She looked away from him, frowning at the sleek mirrored doors of the elevator. Calm music played somewhere above their heads, and Katty realized that it was Enya. "Huh."

She felt Bane's eyes on her but he said nothing.

It was absolutely freezing once they stepped out into the late afternoon, but Bane had picked out a good coat for her and Katty stayed warm inside of it.

"So, where's still open?" she asked, looking up at her masked companion as they started to move down the snow dusted sidewalks. His mask hissed.

"There's a store open down this way."

"Do you have any money?"

Very slowly, he looked down at her, a flat look in his gray eyes. She drew back a little but met his gaze solidly, her brow furrowing.

"Do- do we _need _money?"

"Not anymore," he said, his voice light and his eyes unchanging. Her brow furrowed more deeply and he gave one of his short, mechanical sighs. "Food is being supplied to us by the mainland and replaced as needed. There is no one to pay, little bird."

At that she did start and stared at him as though she'd seen him for the first time. "Little bird?"

He was smiling. "You understand the reference?"

"Yes, I do, and we are _not _going down that road. If you want a nice, condescending pet name for me, you'll have to pick another one. I know where the 'little bird' road ends."

She couldn't tell because he looked away from her then, but she thought he rolled his eyes. She decided to ignore it.

"So, if no one's working, how are there still restaurants and movie theatres open?"

His legs were much longer than hers and every few steps she had to do a funny little hop-skip to catch up with him. There were more people on the streets today than she'd seen in a while and they were all staring at the two of them with wide and confused eyes. Katty didn't blame them; there was the tall, menacing masked terrorist, and the short, chubby blonde girl, who was currently high on painkillers and chattering at the terrorist like they were friends.

"Some people like to work," he said, and his voice was amused. He seemed to have noticed the same thing she did, and they absolutely noticed that people gave them an extremely wide berth. Katty almost- _almost_- wished they'd see someone from high school, even though it'd been almost two years since she'd graduated and really, it was time to just let it all go. There were a certain number of people (the number was four) who she sort of wished would see her walking side by side with Bane.

But they reached the store, an old Walmart that had been vigorously revamped in the past few years, without seeing anyone she knew at all.

Katty grabbed a cart- _Jesus Christ I am actually grocery shopping with freaking __**Bane**_- and headed directly for the meat section. She was vaguely aware of Bane following her and for a few minutes she just looked at the food.

She got chicken and hamburgers and a steak, things that would be easy to cook, and then she made a beeline for the vegetables.

There was something very relaxing about it, despite the masked man at her side. It was _normal. _If she ignored the smell of chemicals and smoke and leather and old books that clung to Bane, if she shut out the hiss from his mask, then she was alone and running errands for her family. It couldn't last, of course. But she still enjoyed it.

"Now that you've got the medicine I made," she asked, grabbing a package of green beans and tossing it into the cart with a metallic clang, "are you going to take off the mask?"

He just looked at her for a minute, his eyes unreadable, and she continued, pretending to examine the nutritional value on a gallon of milk.

"Cause," she continued, keeping her voice conversational, "I could get some food for you, too. Since, you know, thanks to you I don't have to pay for it or anything so it's not like it'll be a huge sacrifice."

She knew he heard the sarcasm in her voice because he smiled, and then she frowned to herself because she knew he'd smiled only by the change in his eyes; the lift of his lower eyelid and the wrinkles that fanned out from the corner of his eyes. He was becoming familiar to her, and something in that was terrifying.

"The thought is appreciated," he said in his mechanical tone, his accent lilting, "but unnecessary."

"Seriously," she said, leaning on the handle of the cart as they started to move. "How do you eat? I mean, I've been your captive-" his eyes flashed at that but he said nothing, "- for about three weeks now, and I haven't seen you eat, not once. How do you do it?"

He looked at her for a moment as they moved, and he seemed to be considering something. Then he said-

"Very carefully."

Katty stared. And then gave a completely involuntary laugh that surprised both of them and made a man in his thirties look up at them, startled, from an aisle over. Bane seemed pleased; the wrinkles around his eyes deepened, anyway.

"Okay, fair enough. Oh, crap-"

She trailed off into silence, thinking for a moment. She knew she needed female hygiene products, and for a second she considered trying to get Bane to go get himself another normal shirt or something, but quickly abandoned the idea. After the events of a couple days ago and thanks to their extreme, if polite, distrust of each other, she knew that it wasn't likely and decided not to waste her time. She gave a mental shrug and headed to the tampons.

It was actually extremely funny. She felt no awkwardness at all- it was just biology- but Bane looked so out of place amongst the Tampax, with his mask and his eyes and his hands gripping his collar that she actually snorted and he gave her a flat look.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" His voice was extremely unimpressed. She couldn't bite back a grin.

"Little bit."

That time, she was positive- he absolutely rolled his eyes at her. She seriously considered chucking a box of pregnancy tests at his head but decided against it- he _had_ saved her life.

There weren't cashiers anymore, but there were stations they went through to check out. Instead of a cashier, there was one very unhappy looking government official, walking between the check out lines, and there was a log book where they had to enter their names, the date, what they were taking, and how many people the supplies were for. Katty grabbed a pair of boxers to sleep in as they headed to this station, and when she looked up, the pack of plaid shorts in her hand as Bane leaned on the cart next to her, her jaw dropped.

"Oh, Christ," she exhaled, tossing the boxers into the cart, her heart pounding unnecessarily hard. Bane looked over his shoulder, following her line of sight. There was a couple, about Katty's age, staring at Katty and her captor in utter disbelief.

_This is what you wanted, dumbass. And seriously, you're with freaking Bane and you're nervous about these two? Priorities, woman, you need to work on yours._

"Friends of yours?" Bane asked mildly, his eyes flashing away from them and back to the blonde. She cocked her head, raising her eyebrows.

"They used to be."

His eyebrow lifted in questioning.

"They used to be some of my best friends," she said, turning her back on the staring couple and stalking towards the check out station. "I'd had a huge thing for that guy since I was like… twelve. She started dating him. Long story short, we aren't friends anymore."

His eyebrow lifted more.

"It was a bad year," she said shortly, entirely unwilling to go into any more detail. He didn't push.

Bane glanced back over his shoulder. "They're still staring."

She gave him a withering look. "Gee," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I wonder why that might be?"

The look he gave her then was definitely amused.

She bent over the ledger and slowly began to write out all the required information with her bad right hand. She had to go slowly, because using the wrist hurt, and after a few minutes the pen was plucked out of her hand by Bane.

"Uh, rude-"

"If I were to let you continue at this speed we'll be here all night. Move."

So she stepped back and let him fill it all in, all the while feeling the eyes of her not-friends on the back of her head. She wondered what they were thinking, seeing her with this man.

After a few more minutes, Bane dropped the pen on the ledger and it rolled away. They were walking towards the exit when they were stopped by the government official, a woman who seemed like she was trying to simultaneously show Bane how much she hated him and how much she was afraid of him.

"You can't take the cart," she said stiffly. Katty looked up at Bane to see him quirking an eyebrow. "We only have a certain number."

"You won't miss one," Bane told her, and his mild mechanical voice was an edict. The woman's eyes flickered to Katty and then back to the terrorist.

"I'm sorry, but-"

"Move," said Bane carelessly, and the woman swallowed her words as Bane pushed past her.

"I'll bring it back tomorrow morning," Katty told her, and the woman gave her a glare that startled her in its ferocity.

"Kathryn." Bane's voice sounded from a few feet away and she gave the woman one last, confused look, and then she caught up with her captor.

"She thinks you're with me," he said, his mechanical tone conversational, as the automatic doors 'whooshed' open in front of them and they stepped into the cold. "She is not going to reciprocate any kindness you show."

"How stupid do people have to be to think I'd _willingly_ be with you?" she snapped, buttoning her coat against the cold with fumbling hands. Bane looked amused.

"Unfortunately for you, my dear, most people will think exactly that. Your friends certainly seemed to."

Katty made an unhappy noise in the back of her throat but said nothing.

Darkness had fallen and the streets were quiet. The streetlights were on, catching the falling snow in their beams, and it was not peaceful. It felt, instead, like a waiting, a quiet preparation. Katty glanced at her masked companion and understood.

The walk back to the apartment was largely uneventful, with Katty pushing the cart over the snow-dusted concrete and Bane walking quietly beside her. He made very little noise, for such a big man; Katty suspected that, were it not for the hiss of his mask, he's be able to sneak up on just about anyone.

000

She made beef stroganov, the kind her father always made for their family, and soon the apartment was filled with the smell of sizzling beef, mushroom sauce, and pasta. Katty actually hummed while she cooked, but not because she was happy; It just seemed the thing to do. Bane was sitting at the kitchen table with a massive file open in front of him, filled with things like blueprints and notes in a language she didn't understand. He had a pencil in his hand and wrote something down every now and then in what looked like Arabic.

She really wished she'd paid more attention in the language last semester.

He glanced up at her, over the notes and the mask.

"You seem to be in a good mood."

"I'm not," she said cheerfully, moving the ground up beef off of the hot unit and pouring the mushroom sauce into the noodle. "Can you smell this? It smells _incredible,_ you should have some-"

He ignored her attempts at provoking him. "People of foul dispositions do not generally hum as they cook."

"True," she said, raising an eyebrow and pointing a spoon at him. "But people who're trying not to _think_ do."

He raised an eyebrow and she turned back to the stove.

"Fake it till you make it," she said easily, although she knew her expression did not match her voice. "A depressed person wouldn't hum, so I'll hum. They probably wouldn't make beef stroganov either, so I'm doing that too. If I go through the motions enough, I will at some point start to believe it. It's just a matter of time."

She felt his eyes on her for another moment before he spoke. "That is certainly an interesting philosophy."

She gave a decisive nod. "Backed up by years of experience, too."

She ate quickly, and the richness of the food running through her system made her relaxed and sleepy as she cleaned up after herself, washing all the dishes and putting what was left of the food in the fridge. When she was done, she turned back to look at Bane.

"I'm going to bed," she told him. He didn't look up from the file. "There's some food in the fridge, if you decide you want it."

And with that, she disappeared into her room, took an oxycodone, and was asleep very quickly.

000

Bane was gone by the time she woke up the next morning and, when she checked the fridge, the food was gone too.

The smile she gave then was a little sad, and it did not reach her eyes.

000

She was up early the next morning, dressed and showered and re-bandaged herself, very eager to get out of the apartment and to interact with humans who didn't speak with a mask. She was also extremely glad she'd bought a coffee maker, finding herself feeling truly awake for the first time in a long time as she leaned on the counter, taking massive gulps out of the hot mug. Bane was sitting on the couch, going through yet another file.

"Are we gonna… go?" Katty asked slowly, her eyes flicking to the elevator doors. Bane didn't look up from what he was doing.

"In a moment," he said, his mechanical tone very steady. Her brows furrowed slightly but she said nothing.

A few minutes later, the elevator doors slid open and Barsad, with two other men, walked into the apartment. Barsad looked at Bane.

"Sir?"

Slowly, Bane closed the file and unfolded his massive body, rising to his feet with the grace of a big cat about to start a hunt. Katty's eyes were flickering between the two of them; one of the other men had something in his hands, some kind of gun, it looked like, but she knew it wasn't a gun.

"Proceed," Bane said calmly, and Barsad grabbed Katty by the arms. She inhaled sharply in pain and panic.

"Calm down," Bane told her, his mechanical voice mild. "They aren't going to hurt you. Hold out your left hand, palm up, please."

"Wha-"

One of the other men grabbed her arm and twisted it, sending a spike of pain through her body and especially the wound in her shoulder, and she gave an involuntary whimper. Bane's eyes did not change. The third man approached her, holding the gun out, and her eyes widened, flicking from the man to the gun to her wrist and to Bane.

"What-"

"Be quiet," he told her sharply, and the point pressed the point of the gun against her skin. Complete and utter terror filled her and she started to shake.

"Now," Bane said, his mechanical rumble of a voice calm. The man pulled the trigger and there was a whoosh, a soft thump, and a burning pain in her wrist. Barsad released her and she stumbled away from him, holding her hand to her chest.

"You may leave," said Bane carelessly, his eyes not leaving Katty's. "I will join you in a moment."

Neither of them moved until they were alone and then Katty collapsed against the counter, her head spinning and her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. Her wrist was throbbing and she felt a lump there, right in the hollow where her palm joined to her wrist and she realized very suddenly what it was.

"You absolute _asshole_," she spat with a shaking voice through chattering teeth, and when she finally turned her head to look at him, she felt the force of the fire in her own gaze. He was holding bandages and his expression under the mask was flat and unreadable. "You're gonna put a _tracker _in me like I'm- I'm your _dog?"_

"Give me your hand," he said, holding his out.

"Fuck you," she said. "Give me the bandages and I'll do it myself."

He moved forward to take her hand anyway but she jerked backwards, out of his reach, and raised her eyebrows at him. She was still shaking but some of it was anger, now, and when she spoke to him next, her voice was a hiss.

"Don't you _touch _me."

Something did flash in his eyes then, but it was fast and gone before she could put a name to it. Without his eyes leaving hers, he set the bandages and the tape on the counter next to her.

"The tracker is in such a place so that, if you try to remove it, you will open a vein and bleed to death. My men and I have better things to do than constantly watch after you, so this was the logical alternative. It will also monitor your pulse, so I'll know if and when you find yourself in another dangerous situation that _you _probably caused. You will be back here by four thirty this afternoon," he told her, his voice conversation and mechanical and his eyes dark. "If you aren't, I will send out a manhunt and kill every man, woman and child between you and I."

And then he turned on his heel and strode out of the apartment, leaving her to bandage her shaking hand and regain her composure in solitude.

000

"He did a good job stitching you up, at least," said Dr. Langer as he gently examined the areas of flesh around the stitching in Katty's shoulders. She gave a grunt. "You cleanin' these regularly?"

"Twice a day, yeah."

"Good." He gave a decisive nod and pulled the gloves off of his hands and then running a hand over his eyes.

"There was something else I wanted to talk to you about," said Katty slowly, not quite sure how to proceed. Langer's eyes rose to meet hers.

"I have, um… I have chemical depression." She articulated each word very carefully. It was a speech she'd given many times. "It runs in my family. Both of my parents have it, my grandparents, a lot of my aunts and uncles, so I've had it my whole life. Most of the time it's not a problem, cause I'm on meds, you know, so that evens me out, but since I was taken, I haven't had any." She drew in a deep breath. "And it's starting to effect my ability to think and remain objective and logical."

Langer raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue. She decided not to tell him she'd gone grocery shopping with the murderer with the blood of hundreds on his hands.

"I mean," she said, "I have the Oxycodone, so that's better than nothing. And I have to cope, I gotta stay sane and calm somehow. I know it's not the healthiest way of dealing, but I just have to keep my head above the water and I don't really have a lot of room to be picky about how I do that."

He nodded.

"But I need to be able to think, and rationalize, and I can't do that when I'm buzzed all the time."

He nodded again.

"What did you used to be on?"

000

She didn't see her mother that day and very much wished that she had, but being able to talk to people and help them did more good for her than the Oxycodone ever could have. She talked to the women in the rape ward and they gave her advice, told her how to handle it, how to find her triggers and how to control them.

She left at four and realized after a block that she was being followed. They weren't Bane's men; they looked like they weren't anyone's men. There were four of them and her heart was pounding and she was filled with fear and sheer disbelief.

_This isn't happening. Not again. Lightening doesn't strike twice-_

"Hey, girl!" one of them called out to her. She did not look back, held her head up and kept walking, her new pills rattling in her pocket, wishing that she had a gun because no one could touch her then.

She heard them speeding up.

_Just a few more streets._

She could feel the fear rising in her throat like bile and she pushed it down because she knew she could not afford a panic attack or a flashback right now, keeping her eyes straight ahead of her as their footfalls drew closed. She started preparing her mind to fight, thinking back to her "lessons" with Bane, how he moved, the tricks he'd used-

She felt a hand on her shoulder and she drove her elbow backwards, feeling it sink deep into a man's stomach. He wheezed and she said:

"Touch me again and that'll be somewhere that won't just bruise."

Her voice was shaking but she kept moving. She heard the man she'd hit swearing and the other ones were talking too; they were getting angry.

_Seriously what the __**fuck **__there's no way this can statistically be happening to me_-

They were calling after her now, and starting to swarm around her. They were all taller than her, but not as tall as Bane- they looked hungry, and dirty, and she kept walking.

"Hey," said one of them, throwing an arm out in front of her, forcing her to stop. "Don't ignore us."

"Don't get in my way," she snapped, and they laughed.

"Got some spunk in you, huh?"

"So I've been told," she said. Her arms hung loose at her side and she was flexing her hands, very aware that she would not be able to pack a good punch with her right hand.

_Use your legs, do that one thing, swing yourself up at them, you're good at that_-

"Girls with spunk have got no place in a time like this," said another one of them, leaning in and smiling at her. She mapped them out in her mind; there was the one right in front of her, one directly to her left and the other two were behind her.

"Is that so?" she asked him, and then she kicked back with her right leg and felt something like a kneecap give way and the man roared in pain; she drove her elbow into the man on her left's stomach and drove her knee into the crotch of the man in front of her-

And then the second man, the one behind her, knocked her feet out from underneath her and sent her sprawling on the concrete, scraping her hands and leaving them bloody. They were quieter, now.

"Well," said one of them, his voice a growl, "that was unexpected. You _are _spunky."

She said nothing and jumped to her feet. None of them were smiling now and they surrounded her in a circle; she thought about trying to make a run for it but knew she'd never make it past them.

_Think, think, what would Bane do_-

But that line of reasoning was useless because Bane wouldn't be attacked in the first place and even if he was, he could snap their necks in under four seconds. She was barely a fighter in the first place and everything she knew came from Bane and from assorted action movies. She had to fight smart, and how the hell could a five foot two twenty year old with holes in her shoulders and a bad right hand fight smart against four fully grown men?

She thought of the tracker in her wrist. If she could hold them off for a just a few more minutes, Bane would come looking for her, and she was only a street or two over, and she was sure her fast pulse was registering on however the hell he monitored her. She'd start yelling soon- not yet, she had to conserve energy- and he'd find her. She hated that she had to rely on him, but she wasn't stupid; if it was between him and _this_, she'd choose him. Every time.

_Okay. New tactic. Don't try to beat them. Just outlast them._

"I'm artistic, too," she said, her arms out to her sides. The circle of assholes was staring to close in on her. "C'mon, surely this is not the best way to get a date- shouldn't you at least buy me dinner first?"

"I don't think you deserve dinner," snarled one of them.

"Quite right," she chattered, trying to cover how absolutely terrified she was. "How about a coffee, then, that might be good-"

One of them lunged at her and, completely reflexively, she ducked underneath her, sending him sprawling into another man.

She saw an opportunity and she took it. She ran as fast as she could, sprinting, her arms pumping as they shouted behind her, clambering after her.

She was fast, but she didn't think she'd be able to out run them. She had to outsmart them but she had no idea how; she was running on adrenaline and leftover Oxycodone, she wasn't trained for this sort of thing, she was a Graphic Design major for Christ's sake-

_Yeah_, said a quiet voice in her head. _A Graphic Design major who wants to work for the CIA. Start now._

She tried to think as she hurtled around a corner, skidding a little on the concrete and she stared around the street, trying to get her bearings, to plan and to strategize.

_Okay, it's easy. What would James Bond do?_

She skidded into the building on her right, a massive, modern bank, and she knelt behind a desk and waited.

They came in and ran past her; she waited until the sound of them was faint and then she rose to her feet and walked over to one of the walls, where there was a fire extinguisher and a fire alarm. She pulled the alarm and broke the glass to the extinguisher with her very sore elbow, grabbing it and holding the hose out in front of her.

The alarm screeched and whirred and generally made a huge nuisance of itself and, seconds later, the men came skidding back into the massive room. She turned the hose on them. Slowly, they looked from each other and back to her.

"Here's what's going to happen," she shouted over the sound of the alarm. "You four are going to walk out of this building in front of me. You are going to go your separate ways and not get together again, and you're definitely not going to chase down any women who want nothing to do with you. Understand?"

"What makes you think we're afraid of a little cunt with a fire extinguisher?" one of them shouted at her. She raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth but their faces changed, suddenly, into surprise and fear, and she heard the tell tale mechanical hiss.

"If you were intelligent men," came Bane's voice behind her and the mechanical thunder had no problem rising over the shrieking of the alarm; "you would listen to her. However, I can see that you are not at all intelligent men, so let me make this very simple for you."

She didn't have to look at him to see that his eyes were burning.

"If I see any one of you within a two hundred foot radius of this woman, or if I find out you are abusing any other woman, your heads will no longer be attached to their respective bodies." His voice was very polite but Katty heard the dark promise underneath it. Bane turned next to her and gestured to the doors.

"After you."

The men all but ran past them and Bane gave Katty a very hard look before moving over to the fire alarm. He did something, and it quickly shut off. She tucked the fire extinguisher into the crook of her elbow and put her other hand on her hip as he turned back to face her. She could see by the set of his eyebrows that he was angry.

"I had it under control," she said, irritation clear in her tone, and he began to move towards her. He had a very distinctive walk, his shoulders sloping over, and she noticed that he was actually slightly bowlegged.

"They were about to attack you again. What would you have done?"

She raised an eyebrow and hefted the fire extinguisher. He came to a stop in front of her, very close, way too close, less than a foot between them and _why did he always smell like smoke-_

She had to crane her neck back to meet his eyes. "I was handling it. I don't need you to be my _savior_, thanks-"

"Clearly," he rumbled, his eyes burning, "you _do."_

She glared at him and he glared back, and then she turned on her heel and strode out of the building.

They walked back to the apartment in burning silence.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Human" by Ellie Goulding

A/N: Whew, LONG chapter. Things are definitely becoming fun to write. I love the dynamic that's developing and THE TENSION AND HERO/VILLIAN RELATIONSHIP AND THE WHOLE NEED/HATE THING IS SOOOOO MUCH FUN TO PLAY WITH.

Also, to anyone who's worried about Bane being too nice in this chapter, don't worry. That man's always got something up his sleeve and he's always got a contingency plan. :)

Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up the day after tomorrow. I hope the long one makes up for the extra day of waiting, hah.

Keep the song suggestions coming!

Love,

Paradisical


	10. Fire and Ice

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_Come on, come on_  
_Put your hands into the fire_  
_Explain, explain_  
_As I turn and meet the power_  
_This time, This time_  
_Turning white and senses dire_  
_Pull up, pull up_  
_From one extreme to another_

_From the summer to the spring_  
_From the mountain to the air_  
_From Samaritan to sin_  
_And it's waiting on the end_

**Chapter Ten: Fire and Ice**

"Boss."

Barsad's quiet voice broke through Bane's thoughts and the masked man turned, looking down into his subordinate's vacant eyes. He was a good soldier, smart and loyal almost to a fault, and so Bane didn't care at all that he seemed to be not quite there.

"The men have searched every inch of the part of town where she disappeared. There's no sign of her, and the other two are gone, as well. They've just vanished. Into thin air, it seems."

Annoyance filled him and he did not ask how three teenage girls had managed to elude men who killed and hunted for money. The men who had lost them would be finding out soon enough exactly how pleased he wasn't with them; there was no point in wasting his vitriol on Barsad, who was nothing if not competent. "And the family?"

The look that crossed Barsad's face then was almost impressed behind the vacant stare. "Gone, sir. They disappeared sometime last night, right out from under the guards' nose."

Annoyance gave way to anger and he was careful to control his voice when he spoke next. "And who was stationed outside the house during the time they escaped?"

"Nelson, Adris, and Jaime, sir. They swear that they didn't see anything. They're waiting for you outside. The four who lost the girl's friends are in City Hall."

"Good. I will kill them next." Bane's boots thumped silently against the floor as he moved towards the door, and the anger that coursed through his blood was familiar and strengthening. He didn't let it control him; it was simply a buzz, an internal release of hormones that he did not hesitate to use to his advantage.

The three men were waiting for him out in the hallway, and they all looked up, terrified when he stepped out of the old conference room.

"Sir, I have no idea how it happened, one minute they were just gone-"

"-we were surrounding the place, there was no way they should have been able to get away-"

Bane held up a hand and they fell silent, fear plain on their worn faces. He felt nothing, apart from the buzz of anger, no regret or malice or the weight of any vendetta. What was about to happen was simply something that had to be done.

"Don't be afraid, brothers!" he told them, his voice lilting and light and not reassuring at all.

"You aren't going to kill us?"

"Of course I am," he told them amiably. "But at least it will be quick."

000

The day after she'd tried to kill him, after he'd found her broken and bleeding and weak and he'd felt fire in his blood in place of ice, he'd given five of his men orders to bring in her friends, preferably alive. But he'd underestimated how slippery and how quick these people of Gotham were, and they'd gotten away, and so had her family, melting into the night.

It was extremely impressive, actually, but it was no more than a slight hitch in the overall plan. There was no way out of the city and only so many places to hide; it was just a matter of tightening the net around Kathryn's nearest and dearest. He would find them and he would use them; the girl needed to be controlled.

He had long since learned that there were only two ways to control a person and those were fear and love. Both were powerful; he'd always chosen fear, personally, as it was always easier and much neater. Fear didn't work with her, though; that much was painfully clear. It would keep her in line, up to a point, but she was constantly looking for a way out.

No, with her he had to be more than a menacing figure in the shadows. He had to isolate her and make her dependent on him without trapping her; cornering her would only result in more attempts on his life. He seriously doubted she'd ever succeed, but it was annoying nonetheless. He needed her afraid, but to control her completely, he needed her to love him, too.

He'd heard her thoughts on redemption, on forgiveness, and he knew how good she was. She was the kind of person who _needed _to believe that everyone was capable of redemption, and Bane knew that, if he gave her a reason to think that he wanted redemption, she would latch onto that and she would do everything in her power to "fix" him. And then it would be laughably easy to drag her down into the darkness with him.

_Although_, he thought, with a touch of something that might have been regret in a more human man, _it will certainly be a shame to put out a light that shines so brightly._

Part of him, very small, very young and hidden very deeply, hoped that she would outlast him. But he doubted it.

000

He returned to the apartment that afternoon to find it empty and checked the time- she had ten minutes, so he pulled the digital pad that monitored her pulse and her movements out of his pocket and sat on the couch, waiting. She was only a few buildings away from the apartment and her heart rate was normal. He put down the pad and he waited, watching the doors that concealed the elevator.

They slid open a few minutes later and she stepped out, her hair pulled back from her cold-reddened face and there were snowflakes melting on her shoulders. Her eyes immediately flashed to Bane and her jaw tightened but she said nothing as she began to shrug out of her jacket. Bane followed her with his eyes, watching the jerky way she moved and how she winced as her shoulders jostled. He waited for her to speak and she didn't disappoint, turning to face him, crossing her arms gingerly across her chest, her face expressionless and her eyes burning.

"I want a gun," she said flatly. He raised an eyebrow.

"And I should give you one because you asked so politely?"

"Because I have no interest in being a damsel in distress every time something goes wrong. I can't fight, not with my shoulders being screwed up, and my wrists too, so I need to be able to defend myself. So I should get a gun."

"While I wait for you to kill me in my sleep?" His voice was conversational but he made sure that his mechanical tone was a warning. She leaned back against the counter, crossing her legs at the ankles, unsmiling, with that burning look still in her eyes.

"If I killed you, I'd be getting my family delivered to me in bags, so that isn't exactly on my to do list. Plus, you saved my life." She did not sound extremely happy about the fact, but her eyes glinted and her soft mouth stayed in that hard line. "So I owe you. If you die any time soon, it won't be my doing."

He took that information and what it meant- that she was the kind of person who paid back her debts- while he studied her face and her body language. He was still slightly impressed that she met his gaze solidly and that she did not flinch away from him, despite her obvious dislike of him. He wondered how their relationship would have been evolving had he not shattered her thin trust by injecting her with the tracker. He wondered; but he knew it did not matter and it did not change what he would do to her over the next few months. He had five months to bend her and to break her.

"Alright," he said, his raw, mechanical voice light. "Would you like a Beretta 92 FS, or a .45 Christensen Arms Model Commander ACP?"

She did not seem to him to be the kind of person who liked knowing less about something than someone she was at a crossroads with, and he was right. Some sort of shutter closed behind her violently blue eyes and her body language tightened, like she was closing in on herself.

"Which- whichever one's better," she said, finally, her voice emotionless, and he unfolded his body, quickly moving over to her in just a few steps, pinning her body against the counter. He made sure to stand so close to her that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes and he was surrounded by the warmth and the smell of her, filtered as it was by the mask; it was intimidating to her and he knew it. She was very short and he was provided an excellent view down her shirt; the silver cross rested in her cleavage. She really was very pretty, if a massive pain in his ass.

"Do you know how to use a gun?" he asked her mildly, his mechanical voice sliding over the words. "What it means to point it at a man and sentence him to his death?"

"I killed two people less than a week ago," she said, and her voice was quiet but steady. "I think I'll get used to it."

"It is of course a possibility; you do certainly seem to have an affinity for death and destruction. Of course, it is also possible that you might even grow to _like_ it." His voice had dropped lower, becoming a growl of mechanical thunder. Her lips parted a little in shock and the shutter behind her eyes opened again and he saw her shock very clearly.

"I will _never _like it," she said and her voice did shake now, "I hate it, I hate the blood on my hands-"

"Really?" he said, amused. "You seem more traumatized by the damage _you've _suffered than the damage you've _inflicted._ It's almost admirable, really, how selfish you are, while you operate under the guise of heroism. My people could take lessons from you."

Her jaw clenched and her eyes flashed with an incredible fire. "Get away from me-"

He leaned down, just slightly, bringing his masked face closer to hers, and when he spoke, his voice was a parody of concern. "Are you uncomfortable, little one?"

"No, I'm angry-"

"-and you are _weak_. You have nothing to do with all that anger but let it rise higher and hotter inside of you, there is nothing you can accomplish for all your rage. How _exhausting _that must be."

He anticipated her movement before she knew what she was going to do, he recognized it in the tightening of her brows and the tensing of her shoulders; her face contorted and she swung at him with her right hand, forgetting that she was weaker than normal, and he grabbed her forearm and pulled her closer to him, twisting her around so that her back pressed against his chest and he tightened his right hand around the base of her throat. He could feel her heartbeat, fluttering like a bird- _such a little bird_- against his palm and her skin was smooth and soft, and he was wearing no vest this time; he felt her curves, pressed tightly against him, and a fire was lit in his stomach.

"I told you," he murmured and he felt her pulse increase, fluttering under his hand, "your opponent's body can be your greatest weapon. You simply have to learn how to read them, how to use them against them_selves_-"

She drove an elbow back and he twisted away before it could find his body, still grabbing her right arm, and he spun her around again, gently, although he knew it wouldn't seem so to her, and he slid his hands down to her wrists and locked them in a vise-like grip behind her back.

"And here I thought we'd moved past this," he said, his voice not unkind under the mechanical rasp. "It seemed as though you were beginning to feel _affection _for me-"

"No," she said, a little out of breath, her voice hard. "I owe you a debt. The second it's paid we're back to square one and I _promise _you… one day- one day this'll be over, either the bomb will go off or we'll be free and when that day comes, a hell of a lot of people are going to come for you." He almost wished he could see her face; her voice was shaking with something that wasn't exactly fear or anger, but something much stronger than either. "And I will be leading the charge."

"Is that so?" he said, his voice low and amiable, his hands tightening on her wrist, and he ran his thumb gently over the lump of the tracker, pleased when he felt her tense and even more pleased when he heard the hitch in her breath. "I look forward to it."

"Me too," she spat. "Let go of me."

He considered pulling her closer to him- her body was very warm and very soft- but let her go after a few seconds, his hands falling away from her body. She jumped away from him like he was an electric current and when she turned to look at him, the look on her face was different than any he'd seen on her features before. He was used to her fire and he'd even seen her relatively comfortable, laughing and smiling, but this was different. This was cold and ancient and a promise; her eyes did not burn. Her eyes were ice and every line and curve of her body was set into a challenge. It would have been impressive, to anyone but him, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Such anger," he said softly. "For such a small, young thing. It will destroy you, you know. It will rip you apart from the inside out and not even I will be able to pick up the pieces."

She didn't speak but kept him locked in that ice emanating from her violently blue eyes. Her skin was pale but there was a red flush in her cheeks and her shaggy hair was falling around her face and for the first time, in that moment, with that eternal anger, she became beautiful.

She still didn't speak and instead straightened up, despite her wounds and the pain she was obviously in, and she walked past him with her head high, the scent of gardenias and laundry detergent trailing after her. He watched her go, turning as she moved past him, his eyes on her until her door slammed closed.

"So, that's what it will be," he murmured to himself without really realizing it. "Her own anger will break her."

000

Strangely enough, sitting on her bed with icy rage flowing through her blood, Katty realized the exact same thing. Really, she'd known it for a while, since the night he'd forced her to attack him over and over and the fire had turned to ice in her veins; she _knew _that this would be her downfall. It wasn't that her anger was unjustified, or misplaced, it was the sheer ferocity of it. It was the desire to see him bleed and very suddenly she remembered Talia and the poison she'd whispered, remembered the woman's assertion that she, Katty, was good, and her own question, more to herself than to Talia-

_"What if I'm not?"_

Because she wasn't. She tried to be, she wanted to be, but she knew what she was and the stain on her soul extended far beyond Bane and the things she'd done since she'd been taken. She would always _try_ to be good, but that didn't change the fact that it always came back to this, to the fire in her blood that turned to ice. She always burned; she was used to that. But when the ice came, when it filled her like it did now, she did not recognize herself. She became calculating and exacting and hard and vengeful and, now, she became murderous.

And it would be her downfall.

She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. Her hands were curled into tight fists, and the pain from her nails digging into her palms, the soreness in her wrists and the stinging in her shoulders gave her an anchor. She sat like that for a long time.

It was about more than life or death between them, she knew that. It was about souls. It was about corruption and redemption and the abyss that could swallow a person if they looked too deeply into it. It was a horrible cosmic tango and she _had _to come through it with her soul intact. She'd put herself back together before, piece by piece, and she could do it again. It was a vastly different situation, of course, with more at stake, but the principle was the same. She had to know her limits and recognize her weaknesses.

And her weakness here was that she _wanted _to believe that everyone was good, or capable of it, when it came down to it. It was more than want, really; she needed to believe that people, all of them , could be redeemed, even men like Bane. And that, while noble, would lead her blind because she would latch onto anything good and golden and she would try to fix him.

She was a fool. A sentimental, hopeful, naïve, romantic fool. After he saved her, because he'd been _gentle _and because he'd _smiled _at her, she'd let her guard down. He had let her see what she'd wanted to see; he'd shown her hope. He'd been kind to her, for a few days, so that his cruelty would strike all the deeper. And she'd fallen for it because she needed to believe he was good.

She released her right hand out of the fist and wrapped it around her cross. Still with her eyes closed, she began to pray, the same prayer she'd whispered over the still-warm body of Abby James, the prayer that found her lips whenever she was overwhelmed by the strength of her own failures.

"Have mercy on me oh God, according to Thy great mercy, according to the multitudes of thy tender mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin…"

She did not hear the quiet mechanical rasp outside her door.

**To be Continued**

* * *

"Into The Fire" by Thirteen Senses

A/N: I had originally planned on making this chapter longer, but after finishing this part, I decided to end the chapter here, because if I made it any longer then it would lose its power and this needs to be a really powerful section. SYMBOLISM YAAAAAY

Hope you liked it! ALSO THREE HUNDRED REVIEW OH MY GOSH. YOU GUYS ARE ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! I GET SO EXCITED EVERY TIME I HAVE A NEW REVIEW AND I LOVE THE FEEDBACK AND THE SONG SUGGESTIONS AND THE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. KEEP IT COMING!

Paradisical


	11. The Gunslinger

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_This girl is a stencil of a brushstroke in the rain_  
_She's a ghost of the city she's a body through the windscreen_  
_This girl is the snowfall where the spring should have been_  
_She's the stains on the pages of a top shelf magazine_

_This girl is a black eye she's a bruise on your knee_  
_She's the ashes of the people that you really meant to be_  
_This girl's the resurrection she's the comeback_  
_She's the absinthe and whiskey she is poetry and prozac_

_This girl is taking bets, this girl's a silhouette can't you see?_

_This girl is the flutter of fake lashes in the mirror_  
_She's a ragged edged fedora or a spanish souvenir_  
_This girl is the clean cut she's the frozen ground_  
_She's a knife drawn down the side street when there's no-one else around_

_This girls a forged ticket to a Lloyd Webber show_  
_She's the far end of the graveyard up where the nettles grow_  
_This girl is the rainbow in the dewy eyed stares_  
_She's the name tag on the toe of your long dead love affairs_

_This girl is taking bets, this girl's a silhouette can't you see?_

_This girl is the wild smile the icy stare_  
_She's the crackle of the static she's the curses she's the prayers_  
_This girl is the junkie in the children's matinee_  
_She's the 4 minute warning_  
_She is hell to pay_

**Chapter Eleven: The Gunslinger**

Two days later she was drinking a cup of coffee and reading when a gun was set on the table next to her by a big hand in a familiar wrist brace. She looked up, surprised, and Bane was looking down at her over the mask, his gray eyes dark.

"I picked the Beretta for you," he said, raising his eyebrows. "It's lighter."

She took it, slowly, wrapping her hand around the grip and flexing it. The weight of it was solid and heavy and it felt good in her hand, like it belonged there. That scared her but there was a measure of strength in it, too, and she looked back up at Bane, giving him a small nod that was only a little grudging.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," he said amiably, his raw voice sliding over the words. "You aren't going to the hospital today. We're going down to the old police station and I will teach you how to use that as it was meant to be used so that you are not reduced to throwing it at anyone else's head."

"I shot those two guys just fine."

"Yes, you are quite the sharpshooter from three feet. My decision stands."

She nodded again, very grudgingly this time, not wanting to talk to him, and she felt him watching her over her shoulder for a long while as she drank her coffee, like a masked angel of death.

000

"You're still holding it wrong."

She tightened her jaw, ignored him, and pulled the trigger. There was a bang and a jolt that reverberated up her arm and it hurt and the bullet hit the cardboard cut out in the place that would have been a man's stomach.

Bane was sitting in one of the chairs lining the wall behind her, bent forward, his hands clasped between his knees. She felt his eyes burning into her and she tried to ignore that too but she couldn't; it was a physical thing, a tingling in her spine and a brush on the back of her neck.

"If you can't kill a man with one bullet, maybe you don't deserve to kill him at all."

"You know what?" she snapped, cocking the gun with far more force than was necessary, refusing to look at him, "I got this, thanks."

"Do you?" His mechanical voice was amused. "Let's make it more of a challenge, then."

She raised the gun to her eye level, arm straight in front of her, when suddenly the cutout began moving back on the track till it was at the end of the range and presented a much smaller target. Her jaw tightened more and her fingers tapped out a quick rhythm on the grip of the gun, but she drew in a breath and held it, looking down the length of the gun. She wasn't a bad shot, but she wasn't necessarily a good one, either. She figured it didn't really matter if she hit someone in their stomach or their heart or their head, or all three. Bane, of course, thought differently. It was all about _accuracy _with him.

She pulled the trigger and the kick reverberated down her arm, jerking it back; she'd missed the cutout entirely. Bane chuckled behind her.

"At least you'll be fearsome in close quarters."

She drew in a deep breath and raised the gun again. She fired and it clipped the shoulder; Bane gave another chuckle. It sounded so strange, coming from the mask; like thunder itself had been given lungs and was laughing.

"Would you like to learn?" he asked, and his voice was amused behind her.

"I am," she said shortly, raising the gun up again. She heard movement behind her, the shifting of clothes and the hiss of the mask and then footfalls and she stiffened, not wanting him to come any closer to her but knowing he would. And he did. He stood behind her, so close she was overwhelmed by the smell of him and felt the heat from his body on hers, and he put his hands on her hips. Her reaction was sudden and entirely physical and it made her sick, but it was biology and she had little control over it. Her stomach flipped and he angled her hips, pulling them back against his with his big insistent hands.

"Stand up straight," he said, his mechanical voice full of a quiet authority, "and keep your arm tight. Turn your body to the side so that the target you present is as small as possible. Breathe in, and exhale as you fire. No, girl, don't hold your breath. You will shake and that will interfere with your aim- _breathe."_

He had pulled her back into him, her back to his chest, and she felt the strange rigidity of the brace he wore pressing into the middle of her back. His hands were warm and heavy on her hips and she heard him exhale, his chest moving against her back.

"Fire," he said, and she pulled the trigger. Her arm jerked up with the kick and she saw the cutout jump back and when it had stopped moving, she realized she'd hit the bullseye.

_Get away, please get away, please stop touching me_-

But he wouldn't. She knew that. It was another display of power, another way to make her uncomfortable and, more importantly, to mark her as _his. _He would not stop touching her and she would not stop hating him for it.

But, to her surprise, he did let her go. His hands lingered on her hips for a few more seconds, warm and heavy and it was like having a firestorm around her, breathing behind her, but then his hands fell away, the mask hissed and he took a step backwards.

"Good," he said, his voice lifting in a filtered parody of pride. "Again."

She fired and then fired again and again and again, ignoring the burning in her chest and her wrist as her arm kicked back and then back and then back, she fired until the gun was empty and the bulls eye target of the cutout was blown full of overlapping holes.

When the gun was empty and the room smelled of gunpowder, she let her hand and the gun fall to her side. It was heavy in her hand and it felt more like an extension of her, now, than it had earlier, with her hand still shaking from the shocks and the grip warm from her heat. She wondered, suddenly, if this was what she was, what she was supposed to be, what she always had been; if she was the girl with the gun, and she felt a rush of power.

_A gun makes a girl a god._

"Very good," said Bane, and there was nothing mocking or amiable in his voice now; it was metal being dragged across concrete; it was smoke and ice. "I might be able to make a killer of you after all."

She straightened up slowly and turned to look at him. The gun in her hand and the smell of smoke gave her courage. She felt bigger, somehow, than her short and chubby body, she felt immortalized by the gun he'd given her.

She didn't say anything to him, just looked at him. His gray eyes were ancient and a burning sort of cold; she was reminded of Arctic oceans, deep and ancient and cruel. For a few seconds they just looked at each other, and for the first time, Katty felt like his equal. He was something more than human and now she was, too, and she faced him down even though she had to look up and she felt something inside of her expanding.

Wordlessly, he turned, and she was subjected to his back and the high collar of that dark coat.

"Reload your weapon," he said, his mechanical tone careless in front of her.

She did, quickly, then flicked on the safety and tucked the gun into the front of her jeans.

They walked in silence out of the old, abandoned building and the cold hit them like a living thing as they walked through the streets. It was very cold, and very quiet, and Gotham felt like a ghost town.

_Twelve million people_, she thought to herself. _And no one's home._

And it was his fault, the man beside her, tall and imposing and inhuman, with the mask that hissed when he breathed and the voice like thunder. She wondered suddenly how things would be different if he hadn't decided to inject her with the tracker; he'd been kind, those days after the attack, or as kind as a man like him could be. She knew that there was no world in which Bane would be soft or gentle but he'd been kind, at least, and, holy _hell_, she'd gone fucking grocery shopping with the man who had destroyed her town.

She glanced over at him. He was looking straight ahead, his face behind the mask measuring and calculating and cold.

_You're an idiot_, said a voice in her head that sounded very much like Brooklynne Bell, who she missed with a strange, sad burning.

She looked back to the street and the buildings and the snow falling gently from the gray sky. It was December fifteenth. Bane had been in the city for over a month, and she had been with him for about a month even; she was twenty years old; her family and friends were in danger, there was a tracker in her wrist, two holes in her shoulders and a mercenary who smelled like smoke and chemicals and thunderstorms at her side.

She had never felt more _alive._

000

Bane took her back to the apartment, left her at the doors to the building and told her to go up before turning and striding away from her, back into the ghost city that Gotham had become. She watched him walk and her hand found the grip of her gun, almost unconsciously, and she realized suddenly how familiar he was to her. She'd known it for a while, of course; she could tell when he was smiling and when he was angry and when he was annoyed and considering all she had to go on was his eyes, that was no mean feat, but this went beyond that. She knew the slope of his shoulders and the length of his arms and the fact that he always wore a brace around his back and another one on his right wrist. She knew that he was slightly bowlegged and that he carried string around in his pockets and he _made _things with it, like he didn't even realize he was doing it- she knew he grabbed the neckline of whatever he was wearing when he wanted to be impressive or when he was just standing still, and she knew that the only thing that made him human was Talia al Ghul.

_And you_, said a quiet voice, and this one sounded like Caroline.

Somehow, he had become her world. There was nothing romantic or happy about it, she thought as she climbed into the mirrored elevator, because she hadn't been given a choice. He had taken her friends and her family and her city from her and he controlled her every movement with the tracker in her wrist and with threats and with his ancient eyes.

She stepped out into the apartment, shrugging out of her coat and she turned back and looked at the clock over the elevator. It was still fairly early; only noon.

She made a sandwich for lunch and ate quickly, realizing as she did so that she'd lost weight. A few months ago, this would have been exciting, but now it was just another sign of all that had changed. It wasn't a lot; she was still chubby and curvy and she knew her body would always be soft, and she was okay with that. She was more concerned about what her body could _do_, and when it came to that, she was pleased.

But she wanted to be stronger. So, when she was done eating, she went into her room, stripped the bed of its sheets and dragged the mattress off of its expensive frame, propping it up against the wall. She slipped off her shoes, went into the kitchen, grabbed the bandages, and began tightly wrapping both of her wrists and her hands until there was enough support for her to flex her hands without pain.

"This is probably a really bad idea," she said to herself as she went back to her bedroom. She faced the mattress, shaking her arms out, flexing and relaxing her hands at the same time. And then she gave her head a vigorous shake, pulling her shaggy hair back into a ponytail.

She'd never really been known for good ideas, anyway.

000

They'd called themselves the Golden Four because they needed a name for what they were, but the name took them and molded them around it and at some point, it became the truth. They were golden, those four girls, but only when they were together. Separately they were blue and yellow, green and lilac, but the four of them together became golden and they glittered and they glowed. Katty was the oldest, by twelve hours, and she was blonde and curvy and blue eyed and she had a grin like a shark. Holly was born twelve hours after Katty and was the exact same height as the blonde girl, down to the centimeter, and she was beautiful in a way that people didn't expect to see in real life, with long dark hair and eyes the color of sea glass. Caroline was tall and slender and had a face that could have been painted by an old master of the Renaissance; she had a hooked nose, green eyes and red hair and she was the only one who didn't see how stunning she was. Brooklynne was the youngest but not the baby, almost a year younger than the rest, with light brown hair, a cherub-like face and eyes the color of cold northern oceans.

They'd been together when it happened, on November fifth, a grey Tuesday afternoon. They were all students at Gotham University and classes were out; they convened at Katty's house, laughing and drawing and being the kids they were. Or, more accurately- the kids they had been.

And then they felt the first shake.

They rode out the explosions with shouts of alarm and cries of sheer panic; when the ground settled Brookynne ran for the TV and they saw Bane striding out onto the ruined stadium.

They sat in silence, listening to his words, filled with a disbelief too strong for fear. When he snapped the man's neck, Brooklynne gave an involuntary gasp and Katty's jaw tightened as her eyes widened and Caroline and Holly jumped back in complete shock.

The next few hours had been hell. There was no phone reception, no way to contact their families, and Katty refused to let them leave her house. Only when Katty's family came home did she get the other three home. Her dad opened the gun cabinet and took out a shotgun before loading the four girls up in the car and dropping them all off at their respective houses, the car filled with a tense silence.

That night, Katty's sister was attacked.

The next day she went to war.

000

She hit the mattress for a long time, long after bruises had formed on her wrists and the wounds on her shoulders were sore and chafed. It was therapeutic; the harder she hit, the less she had to think. There was an incredible focus that filled her as she punched it, again and again, draining the anger out of her, and she realized at some point that she wasn't _not _thinking, but, instead, that she was praying.

She did not notice Bane filling the doorway until he spoke.

"You might have better results learning to fight if you hit something that hit _back_."

She started but didn't scream and jumped around to face him, her heart pounding from the exertion and from surprise, sweat dripping down her face. He stood in the doorway, filling it with the sheer size of him, his hands hanging at his sides and his eyes measuring.

"Are you offering?" she asked him, brushing her sweaty hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. His eyes flickered over her, her slumped, tired posture, her shaggy hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she knew she did not cut an impressive figure.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you not want a gun because of your inability to physically best an opponent?" His mechanical voice was mild but his eyes were anything but.

"Yes," she said, raising her eyebrows. "But I like hitting things, too."

He raised his eyebrows too. "Do you want me to teach you?"

She thought about it for a second and then said, very honestly, "No."

His eyebrows rose up higher.

"But," she continued, "I don't really have any room to be picky."

Something shifted behind his eyes and he just looked at her for a second.

"I could teach you," he said, his mechanical voice sliding easily over the words with a practiced carelessness. "What if I offered you a trade? You return the gun to me, and I will turn your body into a weapon."

"No," she said, without hesitation. His flat stare was questioning. "Maybe one day I can be a weapon, all of me, but if it's a trade, then no. I pick the gun."

It was eerie, how she could feel him evaluating her with that flat, measuring gaze. She knew he was thinking but his face and that cold mask gave nothing away, and so she pushed her hair back again and she waited.

"Fair enough," he said, after what seemed like a very long silence. "Follow me."

He was not a good teacher. He was mocking, and cruel, and he pushed her too hard and he laughed when she failed. He lectured her as he showed her how to twist her body, how to stand and how to swing, and his words adopted a kind of dark poetry that she didn't understand. He _liked _antagonizing her, and showing her all the ways she was wrong, and he was not gentle. Oh, she knew he was holding back, she'd seen him crush a man's windpipe with a single hand, but holding back did not equate gentle.

She tried to sweep his legs out from under him, crouching down, but he grabbed her arms and pulled her up before she could really try.

"No," he said, his mechanical voice filled with something very much like glee. "You are still acting _defensively_- if you wish to best an opponent, you must do more than merely _not_ succumb to them, you must go on the offensive. If you wish to knock me off my feet, turn." He took her shoulders and physically turned her so that she was facing him head on. "Good. Now, instead of just sending your opponent to the ground- what could you do to accomplish the same ends while on the offense?"

She just stared at him. "I don't-"

"His knees, girl, do you think I wear the pads to make a statement?" He was definitely amused. "You break his knees. Hold your fists up, like this, and turn, again-" he'd let go of her shoulders and now made a tight circling motion with his finger and she turned to show him her profile, "-put your weight on your far leg and then kick forward. Use your body's momentum behind your foot, and you will break his knee. It is extremely difficult to fight with a broken knee. Go on, again- mark it."

She did and he corrected her posture, then gestured for her to continue. His eyes were burning. He'd taken off his coat and was wearing only that rigid vest over his pants and the braces around his back and wrist, and when he turned, she saw that scar snaking up his spine. She marked the movements he showed her.

"Good!" he said, his mechanical voice pleased in a mocking sort of way. "Again- do not mark it this time."

"You want me to-"

"Believe me, my dear," he said, and his voice was almost fond but there was that cold fire in his eyes, "you won't be able to hurt me."

She didn't mark it. She leaned back and then twisted forward, her leg swinging away from her body, and she was actually going to hit him-

In less time than it took to blink, his hand had shot out and caught her foot. He nodded at her, once, his eyes glinting above the mask.

"Good! Against a normal man, that would have been effective- you, however, have the misfortune of training with _me_." He twisted his wrist and jerked his arm up and she went sprawling to the floor with a loud swear. "Up."

She climbed to her feet, glowering, wiping her hands on her jeans. He held his arms out wide, his eyebrows rising in a challenge.

"What now?" he asked, mockingly. She heavily questioned her sanity for agreeing to this.

"You tell me, you're the teacher."

"And you make a poor student," he said easily. "Do you have nothing to try?"

"You're twice my size. Charging at you would be one of the stupidest things I could possibly do."

She wasn't sure, but when his eyes flashed then, she thought it was a mixture of surprise and pride. He gave another deep, quick nod and let his muscular arms fall back to his sides.

"Good. You must recognize your limitations; your opponent certainly will and they will not hesitate to exploit them."

She thought it was interesting that he said 'opponent' instead of 'enemy'.

"What are your limitations?" he asked her, and for a second she just looked at him, at the way he stood, his sloping shoulders and dark eyes above the mask.

"I'm a short, for starters," she said flatly. "I don't have a lot of experience so I mostly go on instinct, I'm not strong and… and I don't really have any idea what I'm doing."

His eyes searched hers for a minute. "The last one will be remedied in time. As for the rest- you are right. Any opponent you come against will be larger and stronger than you." He started to circle her, unblinking, and he did not take his eyes off of her. She stayed where she was, breathing heavily, and stood up straight. "So you must be more than a good fighter, brave little bird. You must be smart, as well."

He stopped in front of her, very close, looking down at her with his hands grasping the front of the vest. "How do you fight smart?"

"I- well, I'm smaller, so I can be faster."

He nodded and his eyes told her to continue.

"Try to outlast them," she said. He made no movement. She was suddenly very aware that she hadn't taken a shower yet that day, that her hair was greasy and that she stank of sweat.

"Try to- to land a lot of blows, hit them a lot, instead of going for one big knockout move." She wished he'd blink, or step away, but he did neither. She was suddenly very glad for the mask; she was glad that she couldn't see his nose and especially his mouth. It was a barrier that couldn't be crossed and that came with a rush of relief and something else, something deep in the pit of her belly that she did not let herself name.

"Good," he said again, his voice very low under the mechanical thunder. "That will be all for today."

And then he slowly turned and walked away from her.

000

She took a shower and emerged from it feeling like she'd been scrubbed from the inside out. She felt shaky and weak and sore but it was cleansing, too, in its own way. At least she was doing something.

She dressed and brushed her wet hair away from her face before going back into the kitchen to get her dinner. The sky outside the windows was dark and dotted by the falling snow; she was struck, very suddenly, by homesickness. She missed her family and her friends; she should be in her house, filled with Christmas lights and laughter and the scent of pine needles. Instead, she saw Bane at the table with a file spread open in front of him and something tightened in her stomach.

She made herself a ham sandwich, slathered it in ketchup, poured herself a glass of milk, and sat at the table across from Bane. She said a quick blessing, crossing herself tightly and then she started to eat, looking out the window to watch the falling snow.

There was a very surreal quality to this; the two of them at a table, going through files and eating a sandwich. It was a similar feeling to the one she'd had in the grocery store; it was like a glimpse of another life.

"You know," Bane rumbled, and Katty looked up sharply, her mouth full of sandwich and he was still looking down at the sheets in the folder, "I never did ask you what you think of this brave new world."

He did look up then and she swallowed, feeling very awkward, and his eyes burned into her.

"Are you serious?" she asked him, her brow furrowing. He lifted his eyebrows slightly. "Do you honestly think I have anything good to say?"

He looked slightly amused. "No. But I am… curious."

She stared at him for a minute, caught completely off guard. And then her heart began to pound and she felt a familiar buzzing in her blood.

"Well, for starters," she said, and her voice did shake but not out of fear, "The body count has reached the thousands. A lot of the people dying now are starving or just _freezing_ to death, and the crime rate has- has absolutely skyrocketed since you turned the prisoners loose on the city-"

"The bonds that held them were rotted and corrupt."

"But they held them," snapped Katty, leaning forward. "Since the Dent Act was passed eight years ago, the crime rate in this city decreased by eighty percent."

"The Dent Act was based on a lie."

"But- that's- sometimes it's about _more _than that. There was less murder and theft and rape, the streets got cleaned up, the average rate of _income _even went up."

"And is that worth it?" Bane asked, lifting an eyebrow. "If the good that has been done was based on an evil, does it still… count?"

She stared at him. "There are people who would be dead today if the Dent Act hadn't been passed. People who would have been murdered, in cold blood, just cause they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Obviously there was something going on with Dent and the Batman that we didn't know about, but that- that doesn't mean that what happened _means_ any less. I mean, yeah, they shouldn't have lied but they _did._"

"And you would have that wrong go unpunished?"

"It- what- look, it isn't my job or my place to go around dealing out judgment or punishment. It should have been corrected, yeah, but seriously, you went about it completely the wrong way."

"The people are free now, from the corruption and the oppression of this... _joke _of a city."

"Are you even hearing yourself right now?" she snapped before she could stop to think about it. His eyes flashed in warning. "I mean… were you even… here? Did you even _see _what Gotham was before you razed it to the fucking ground?" Her eyes were flashing. "Because I lived here for twenty years and I can tell you that there is nothing "brave" about this new world. The world you created is broken, and… and messed up, and without rules or guidelines or, hell, any kind of moral authority, and as cool as that sounds to some kind of teenage anarchist, it doesn't translate well into real life. Clearly."

He leaned forward, clasping his hands together on top of the papers spread in front of him. "What you have seen… is the _true_ face of Gotham. People become what they really are when they owe nothing to anyone, when they can do as they like without repercussions. You are angry with me for tearing this city apart, but I didn't. I merely made a crack and your… your people, your fellow citizens, they are the ones who turned Gotham into an open, festering wound."

She was shaking her head and staring at him. "But that… that's not the point."

"And what is the point, pretty little girl?"

"The point is, it never should have happened in the first place. It's like I told you, human beings in a mob turn into monsters and you're the one who turned this place into a mob-"

"All I did was give the city the tools. You did the rest on your own."

"I had no part in this," she hissed, her eyes going wide in anger, leaning forward. "I fought back, and I'd still be fighting back if you hadn't caught me-"

His eyes glinted with amusement. "Yes. I know."

"Do you really think you've actually helped this city?"

A deep nod. "I know I have."

"Alright, you seem like a numbers sort of guy. Wanna hear some statistics?"

The skin around his eyes tightened but she continued before he could speak.

"First off, take me as an example. I was almost raped twice in three days- do you have any idea what the odds of that are?"

"You are a statistical anomaly."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too." She leaned forward, her eyes burning into him. Fire was pulsing in her blood and she felt her teeth beginning to chatter. "And then I started talking to some of the other people at the hospital, a lot of the women. You know how many women have been raped since you came to town? Hundreds. Fucking- _thousands_, Bane, Christ- as many women have been raped in the past month as in the past like, three years in this city- you know, when the Dent act that you really seem to hate was passed, after murder, you know what the next crime to decrease really freaking drastically was? Rape." She was shaking now, her teeth chattering, and his eyes were dark and unreadable. "National statistics say that one in every four women have been raped but- but in Gotham, after the Dent act, it was more like one in _ten. _Freaking _ten. _Now, since- since you "liberated" the city, it's about every other woman, because there are gangs of rapists that you freed roaming the streets, and the thing is, the stats that Dr. Langer has, he doesn't even think it's the half of it because most women aren't reporting it because _why the hell would they? _What happened to me was not an- an anomaly, that's why it's so messed up, if it was just me I could deal with it, but what happened to me is the norm, now. People are dying out there, Bane, a lot of them, every day. That isn't liberation, that isn't- it isn't freedom. It's humans in a mob."

"Is that why you fought back?" he asked, mildly, his mechanical voice a roll of thunder over her buzzing skin. "Is that why you tried to raise a rebellion that you knew would fail?"

"I did it because someone had to," she said shortly. "And I didn't know if anyone else would. I did it because that first night, a man broke into my house and tried to rape my thirteen-year-old sister, and I had to kill him. I did it because I love this city, because I love these people, and because I know there's good in them."

"All of them?" he asked quietly. Her mouth opened slightly. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say that there was good in everyone, even the masked terrorist now staring at her with burning eyes-

But she wasn't that girl anymore.

"Let me rephrase that," she said, quietly. "I did it because there are people in the mob who will wake up someday soon, and they will remember that they are human."

His gray eyes searched hers for a long moment. His mask hissed before he spoke, and his voice was very low.

"What if they don't?"

She was quiet for a minute.

"Well," she said, finally. His eyes burned into her and she felt like she was on fire. "There's a place in hell for everybody."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"This Girl is Taking Bets" by Thea Gilmore

A/N: FIRST OFF SOMEONE MADE A MANIP. CHECK. THIS. OUT. IT IS AMAZING OMG

musingsofaliterati . tumblr (.com)/post / 29091764288 / some- say-the-world-will- end-in-fire-some-say-in

Remove the spaces. and the () around .com

Also, I might not upload the next chapter for a few days. College starts back up in about two weeks, so I'd like to have a couple of chapters cushion for when school/work etc get super busy. But I also might upload it the second I'm done because I am so excited about what's about to start. SO I JUST DON'T KNOW

As always- you guys are seriously so incredible. I am so, so humbled and overjoyed by the response to this story. It is MASSIVELY inspiring. If I could reply to every review i could, but there's been anywhere from 30-50 per chapter (HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS DVSK;JFNVLDKJSNVSD) so it's isn't possible. But every review makes me smile and beam and flail like a lunatic.

ALSO ALSO. I highly recommend you pull up the songs at the beginning of each chapter in youtube to listen to. There will be some hints as to where the story is going and the songs are also picked to reflect the atmosphere of that chapter and of the overall story, so you might get something out of it.

LOVE YOU GUYS

Paradisical815


	12. To Be Unmade

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_A burning countryside_  
_Mountains being climbed_  
_We shift and turn and swear and yearn_  
_If only you would mind_

_A general collision_  
_With all that stands as such_  
_We reinvent, we tear apart_  
_And stitch and stitch and stitch_

**Chapter Twelve: To Be Unmade**

The first thing she registered the next morning was an incredible amount of pain. There was a deep soreness sunk into her skin, wrapping around her bones, and the two wounds in her chest felt itchy and irritated. It only got worse when she sat up, groaning, and she sat there in her soft bed for a long time, the blankets falling around her lap, her head held gingerly in her hands. Her wrists hurt, too, and she felt the bruises aching across her abdomen and on her arms.

"Why," she said to herself, very flatly, "did I think this would be a good idea?"

But she moved a few minutes later, wincing as her feet found the floor, and she walked slowly to the bathroom attached to her room, stripped naked and climbed gingerly into the massive, luxurious shower. She turned the heat up till the water was scalding and she stood under it for a long time with her eyes closed, unmoving. She liked the heat; it burned life back into her. It left her skin raw and red but it was so vibrant, so alive, that she couldn't begrudge the heat the marks it left on her body.

But no one could burn forever and when the pain began to verge on unbearable, she reached behind her to turn it to a more mild temperature, and then she washed her hair and her body.

When she had dried and dressed herself (the pinched wounds in her shoulders were red and angry looking around the stitching) she pulled her wet hair back into a braid to keep it out of her eyes.

_Give me a bow and call me Katniss._

Since she'd gone back on antidepressants, she'd been slowly weaning herself off of the Oxycodone, disliking how fuzzy it made her mind, but she took one now to relieve the pain that seemed to be etched into her very bones. She wondered, for the first time, why Bane had given them to her. Her first thought was that he _wanted _her mind foggy; he wanted her to have difficulty being logical and objective. She had no doubt that she was right, at least partly, but she thought of his mask, too, of the scar down his back and of the potion she'd made him. She wondered if the bottle of little white pills was something more than just a way to control her and mold her; she wondered if it was his was of showing a twisted, small sort of kindness, expressing it in the only way he knew. For him, it would be the ultimate gift, a way to erase the pain that plagued him endlessly. And he'd given her a way to lessen hers.

He was a clusterfuck of conflicting actions and words and she'd drive herself crazy trying to interpret it. It didn't matter; really, he'd given her the pills and from here on out, she'd only take them when she needed too.

The apartment was empty and quiet and she vaguely remembered voices, one filtered and mechanical, the other low and accented, that'd floated to her through a haze of sleep that lingered around her brain. She wasn't sure if it had been a dream or not, but Bane was gone and that made her think that maybe it had really happened.

She mixed her coffee and waited for the maker to finish; the smell of it floated around her, comforting and familiar, she was reminded suddenly of the early mornings in her gray brick house. Everyone was going to different places; Naomi and Seraphim, the youngest two, were in middle school, Nathaniel was a senior at Gotham High, her mother worked at a bank, and Katty and her father, Ted, were a student and professor, respectively, at Gotham University. Mornings were chaotic and sleepy and tainted by the smell of coffee in her memory. She missed her family and she was worried about them, constantly, always in the back of her mind. She was afraid to make a wrong move, afraid to piss Bane off (even though she couldn't keep her mouth shut) because he had his thumb over the people she loved most.

The coffee maker beeped and she poured the steaming brown liquid into a two-dollar mug, mixing a very liberal amount of cream and sugar into it. Once she wouldn't have added the sugar; it was extra calories she didn't want, back when losing weight was one of her biggest concerns.

She snorted into the mug, a humorless and bitter sound.

_Funny how priorities change._

She drank the coffee quickly and tossed the mug into the sink before grabbing her jacket and gun off the table. She pulled the jacket gingerly over her arms and switched the on the safety of the gun and shoved it down the front of her jeans.

She'd killed three people. She didn't know their names, and she felt surprisingly little regret; she'd killed them to protect her family, and she would do it again without hesitation. She didn't like the blood on her hands, not by a long shot, and she knew it would never wash off, but she'd only done what was necessary.

Something told her that her hands would be covered in much more red before this was through.

000

The girl in the chair was stunningly pretty. She was also dirty, and pale, and had a look of confusion and shock and anger on her freckled face and, if Bane didn't know her birthday, he was have guessed that she was seventeen or eighteen.

But he knew that she was twenty, and that she hadn't been twenty for very long; most interestingly, he knew she'd turned twenty on the same day as his brave, pretty little captive.

For a few seconds he just looked over her, his eyes raking over her body and absorbing all the information it offered. She did not meet his eyes; she looked anywhere but at him. She looked like a caged animal, desperate for a way out but not calm enough to strategize.

He turned to one of the men behind him; he was short, soft looking, and not much older than the girl in the chair. He looked nervous and yet very pleased with himself. Bane knew his type; desperate for praise and glory, yet not willing to work or stick his neck out for it. The League sometimes attracted men like him. They never lasted very long.

Barsad stood in front of the door, unmoving, his vacant eyes unreadable, his gun in his hands.

His mask hissed before he spoke. "Where did you find her?"

"Down in the Narrows, sir," said the man. Bane's eyes searched his face.

"What is your name, boy?"

Something flickered behind his eyes and he liked his lips. "It's, uh- Trevor, sir. But my friends call me 'T'-"

Bane's eyes narrowed and the mask hissed. "Do I look like your friend?"

He swallowed, eyes widening slightly, and shook his head. "No- uh, no, sir."

"Was she alone?"

'T' swallowed again, his eyes flicking nervously over to the pretty girl in the chair.

"She, uh- I-"

"Did you misunderstand the question?" Bane's voice was calm under the mechanical filter but his eyes were full of ice. "Was Holly Wakefield _alone_?"

He closed his mouth and shook his head. "No. There was another girl."

Bane's eyes flashed to Holly Wakefield. She was looking at him, now, her pretty eyes wide in horror and in anger.

"And what happened to her?" Bane asked Trevor, not taking his eyes off of the Wakefield girl.

"She got away," mumbled Trevor. Bane turned his head slowly to look back at him and Trevor started, his eyes locking onto Bane's.

"She got away?" he asked with deceptive mildness. "How?"

"Well, they- I- t-to be honest, sir, I didn't know if I could get- you know. Both of them."

Bane raised an eyebrow. Trevor cleared his throat and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck before continuing.

"But- I knew I could get one, and that one-" he jabbed a dirty thumb over his shoulder at Wakefield, "- was lagging behind a little, so I just grabbed her and kept her quiet till her friend realized she was go-"

"And you didn't think to, instead, follow them to where they were hiding and then come to me?"

The man blinked. "I- no, I- I guess I didn't."

"Because," Bane continued, his mechanical voice rolling slowly over the word, "if you had, I would now have two girls for leverage instead of one. But instead, you brought me one girl, and the other has doubtlessly by this time disappeared again."

Trevor's eyes were wide and he was shaking. "I-I didn't think, I'm sorry-"

"Of course you are," said Bane evenly, and he placed his hand on the smaller man's shoulder, palm facing his neck. "But there is no place in my army for men who don't think."

"Wai-"

Before Trevor could finish his last word, before Holly Wakefield could blink her glass-green eyes, Bane's hands had moved to the man's face and he broke his neck with a quick jerk. Wakefield's eyes widened and a strangled sound tore out of her throat. Barsad, at the door, didn't even blink.

Trevor fell to the ground with a solid "thud", his neck twisted at an unnatural angle and his eyes still wide in surprise. Bane watched the body fall with no emotion and flexed his hands before slowly turning to the girl in the chair. She was staring at him now with unconcealed horror, and he saw a familiar spark in her eyes, under the fear; it was a taste of the burning anger that so often twisted Kathryn's features.

"Holly Wakefield," he said calmly, and her eyes went even wider at his raw voice. He took a few deliberate steps towards her. "Where is your friend? Where is Brooklynne Bell?"

"I don't know," she said, in a light, lilting voice that was strong despite the way it shook. "We moved around every night, and she wouldn't have gone back after she realized I was gone, I don't know where she is."

She was telling the truth, he could see it in those pretty eyes, but he regarded her coldly for a few more seconds, and this time she did meet his gaze, although she shrunk back from him.

"The third girl," he said after a few moments. "Caroline Whitaker. Do you know where she is?"

Holly shook her head, long strands of dark hair shifting and settling around her pale face and neck. "No."

After a few seconds of silence he raised an eyebrow. "Would you care to elaborate?"

Holly swallowed and he saw the war in her green eyes; how could she protect her friends and be logical about her situation at the same time? He couldn't help but think that Kathryn would consider the logical option and then proceed to tell him to go fuck himself. He almost smiled. "She went out to get some food and she didn't come back."

He waited.

"Me and Brooklynne left as soon as we realized she was gone."

"Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"

"No." Her voice was terse. Bane gave her another cursory glance before turning back to Barsad. The mercenary met his eyes and Bane pointed at the lifeless Trevor.

"Dispose of the body. Come back here when it is done."

"What should I say to anyone who asks why he was killed?" There was no accusation in Barsad's voice.

Bane raised his eyebrows. "The truth, brother. Tell them the truth."

Barsad nodded and then slung his gun around so that it was hanging across his back, opened the door, and dragged what used to be Trevor out by the feet. The door slammed closed behind him and Bane turned back to Holly Wakefield. She was still scared but she seemed to have back a measure of control, too; she was sitting straighter in the chair and her eyes were very cold.

"Do you have any idea why you are here, Miss Wakefield?" he asked her, his mask hissing over the words. She raised one dark eyebrow.

"I doubt it's for anything good," she said, and her voice shook under the brave words.

"There is a fourth girl," Bane continued, unblinking, not taking his eyes off of hers. "A fourth girl in your… _gang. _She has been with me for almost a month now-"

"What've you done to her?" Holly said, very quickly. Bane raised an eyebrow at the interruption. There was an incredible amount of loyalty between these girls, a foolish loyalty; he'd seen it in Kathryn and he saw it now, in this girl, though hers was less blind and by far more intelligent. It was safe to assume that they'd die (and worse) for each other; there was something in that that almost as admirable as it was stupid.

He didn't think to compare it to his own loyalty to Talia al Ghul.

"Nothing irreversible."

It was partly the truth.

He came to stand directly in front of her and then he crouched down in front of her so that he was on her eye level. She really was incredibly stunning, he noted clinically.

"You are here because your friend needs to be controlled."

Holly actually laughed. It was short and hard and it didn't reach her eyes, but she laughed. "Good luck with that. No one can make Katty do anything she doesn't want too."

_Katty. _Not Kathryn; this girl, his captive's best friend, called her Katty.

Bane liked 'Kathryn' better.

He rose smoothly back to his feet and felt Holly's eyes follow him.

"I think that _I_ can," he said evenly. "And you are going to help prove me right."

Her mouth opened slightly and then she closed it, her jaw tight.

"What are you going to do to me?" Her voice did not shake this time.

"Nothing," he said, smoothly. "For now."

He stopped Barsad before the younger man went back into the room.

"Put her in one of the apartments," he said over the hiss of the mask. "See that she has food and a change of clothes, and put a tracking chip in her. I want you to stand guard. See that she does not escape and that she is not harmed."

"Of course," said Barsad in his accented voice. "Are you going to get the Sherman girl?"

Bane eyes bore into his. "No," he said, his voice rolling smoothly over the words, "not yet."

Barsad blinked.

"When the time is right, my brother," said Bane, and then he pushed past the younger man.

000

"You've irritated the skin around the stitches," said Langer flatly. Katty looked down at her shirtless torso, at the puckered red flesh on her shoulders. "What the hell have you been doing?"

"Fighting Bane," she said, very matter of factly, and Langer drew back slowly before staring at her as though she'd sprouted a second head.

"And… _what_… in the name of- of God and Allah and _Odin _made you think that was a good idea?"

She laughed at that, loudly, throwing her head back. "I never thought it was a good idea. But it's something to do, and I need to be able to defend myself-"

Langer looked very pointedly at the gun, next to her on the table. She gave a half-shrug.

"I like to have options."

"Well, if you keep irritating these, you're gonna shred the skin. Take it easy for a few more days, alright? I know getting to punch the guy has to be tempting, but cool it."

She snorted. "Maybe it would be, if I could land a hit on him."

Langer gave her a very unimpressed look. "You're fighting a guy you can't even hit?"

"Man, he's like… a freaking _tank. _He's not human, I'm actually fairly certain he's a cyborg, it is the only rational explanation-"

Langer cleared his throat and she fell silent. She liked the doctor. He was about thirty years older than her, he was very smart and had a very dry wit, and he made her feel like things were almost normal when she talked to him.

"Are you being careful?" he asked her now, rising off of his stool and pulling the rubber gloves off of his hand with two 'snaps'. Katty grabbed her shirt and pulled it gingerly over her head.

"Meaning…?" she asked slowly, and Langer's eyes became very serious.

"I don't want to scare you, Katty, but he's had you a month and you've come through mostly unharmed-"

"Except for being attacked twice and having to see that- that _hell _they're calling justice, now."

"Believe me," said Langer, flatly, raising his eyebrows. "You're one of the lucky ones."

Her brow furrowed.

"My point is, though… Bane… well, men like him aren't used to waiting for anything. I don't know why he's kept you around this long, I really don't. First time I saw you, I thought you'd be dead or damaged beyond repair within a week. But you're not. He's even protected you from a lot of what's out there-"

"-I'll be sure to thank him for that-"

"Katty, listen to me." Langer's eyes were very serious. "He has you because he wants something from you. I have no idea what it might be because he is not a normal man. I don't think it- it's sex, or anything that simple, because he just would have taken it. But he wouldn't keep you around unless he wants something. So, I'm asking you… are you being careful?"

She thought of the fire in her blood, of the way her skin burned when he touched her.

"I'm trying," she said quietly. Langer's eyes searched hers and he put a hand on her knee. She wasn't the kind of person who liked being touched, even before Bane; touch carried too much power and it was thrown around so easily. But it was comforting, his hand on her denim clad knee. There was nothing creepy about it, and more importantly, no ulterior motive, and that was such a refreshing change from the man in the mask.

"Don't just try," he said. "Be careful."

_Young Padawan_, she thought to herself with more than a little sarcasm.

"It's about more than just you and him," Langer continued. "You started something out there, kiddo, and people out here are still fighting the war you started. If they see you on his side- it'll burn to the ground faster than you can blink."

000

Tom Langer's words stayed with her for the rest of the day, echoing in her head, like a highly stressful and very important news broadcast. She left the hospital that afternoon with her thoughts racing each other around and around in circles- there was no end to it.

It was, somehow, growing still colder in the ghost town of Gotham, but the snows had yet to really come. It was still just flurries; light dusting on the ground. The heavy snow would come in January and it would be gone by February, the same as every year. At least one thing could stay the same.

She felt a sudden and insane urge to sing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs.

Katty flipped the collar of her coat up against the cold, shoving her hands deep into the lined pockets.

She got two blocks before she heard the voice behind her.

"Miss Sherman?"

She whirled around, her hand reflexively going to her gun, to see a young man in maybe his thirties behind her. He had dark hair and a handsome face and he put his hands up when he saw her defensive posture, raising his eyebrows.

"I just wanna talk," he said calmly. She glanced over him; her eyes were more cautious and measuring than they were suspicious. He looked cleaner than most of the people she'd seen lately, and warm enough, which made her doubt that he would try to attack her.

"Sorry," she said, letting her hand fall to her side. " 'S just kind of a reflex, now."

He gave a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Don't blame you at all. My name's John Blake."

He stuck a hand out to her and she shook it, her eyes flicking up and down him, absorbing as much as she could.

"Kathryn," she said. "Kathryn Sherman. Can I… help you with something?"

"I think you might be able to, yeah. Walk with me."

And she did, although she didn't actually trust him (trust was yet another luxury she could no longer afford) and she had no idea what he wanted.

"I've been watching you for a while," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. She looked up at him, taken aback. "I saw you a couple weeks back, with Bane, and then I paid attention to you. Saw you going to and leaving the hospital every day. So I asked around and found out who you were, found out you were his captive and, more importantly- I found out that you're the girl who raised an army in a week."

She blinked. "I mean, it wasn't really an _army_."

"Yeah, it was." He gave her a smile and that time it did reach his eyes. They were brown and very warm and she thought that, if things had been normal, she'd be flirting with him, laughing and loud and charming. "Aren't a lot of people who can do that, not even in a city like this."

"Well, insanity is infectious, I guess."

"The people, a lot of us, we're still fighting. We gotta be careful, but we're fighting. And you… you're Bane's captive."

"Yeah."

"And he keeps you pretty close, doesn't he?"

"Generally, yeah, but-"

"Can you help us?" When he looked down on her then, his brow was furrowed and his face was serious. Katty's mouth opened and she stared at him in surprise.

"What?"

"Pass information along, try to sabotage him and his army, anything you can do- will you help us?"

She swallowed and heard her blood rushing past her ears.

"I- I can't. I'm sorry."

His eyes widened in angry shock. "What? Why not?"

She shook her head slightly, not taking her eyes off of his. "He's got my family, Mr. Blake, and- and my friends."

"He's got all of us," said Blake, his eyes angry. "We're all living under the thumb of a madman and he will kill us all-"

"And that'll change if I tell you what time he sets his alarm for?"

"Maybe," snapped John. Katty shook her head again.

"I can't, he has my _family. _I make a wrong step and they're dead and I can't risk that."

John Blake looked away from her, his jaw working and his eyes angry. He exhaled sharply.

"Fine," he said. "Listen, uh. If you change your mind- see that alley, two down?" He pointed and she followed the line of his finger with her eyes. She nodded.

"Six bricks up from the bottom and two over from the corner, there's a hollow brick. Any information you can think of, anything at all that might be important, even the things you think might _not_ be important, write it down and stick it in the brick, alright?"

She gave a very terse nod. "Okay."

His unreadable eyes flicked between her eyes. "I hope you decide to help us."

And then he walked away and left her speechless.

000

If her mind had been spinning before, it was nothing compared to the hurricane that her thoughts had now been tossed into. She tried to force down the thoughts of John Blake and his request of her rebellion, but she couldn't; she knew, in her gut, that she should help him, that it was the right thing to do; she knew it was bigger than she and her family. But she couldn't. When it really counted, she was a coward, and she could not condemn those eight people, not even for the sake of millions.

_Some hero you are._

It all came back to the man in the mask.

She shook her head as the gilded elevator rose, trying to clear her thoughts; it was, predictably, futile, and the elevator doors slid open at their floor to reveal a hulking figure with his back to her, sitting at the table. She heard the hiss of the mask and felt the familiar tension in her stomach that was part fear and part anger and part stress and part something else and she stepped out of the elevator, shrugging out of her coat as she did so.

"You're early," he said, his voice smooth under the raw, mechanical filter. Katty glanced at the clock over the elevator. He was right; it was only three thirty. She tossed her coat onto the couch and walked past him without looking at him, not responding till she'd opened the fridge and had a banana in her hand.

"Nothin' left to do," she said, and slammed the door closed behind her with an unnecessary amount of force. When she turned around, Bane wasn't looking at her, but had a file, thinner than the ones she'd seen before, open in his big hands. He had on that black shirt and it was strange to see him looking so normal, despite the mask and the brace around his wrist; her eyes followed the line of his throat down to the collar of his shirt.

_He's only human._

They remained in silence for a few minutes, Katty chewing on her banana and watching her captor, Bane ignoring her and reading steadily through the file. He closed the file a few minutes later and set it on the polished table in front of him before lacing his fingers together and putting his hands on top of the folder.

"Is there something you wish to ask me, girl?" he asked, his voice a mechanical growl. His eyes were very grey in the light coming through the window. Katty swallowed the last bite of her banana and tossed the peel on the counter before slapping her hands off against each other and then crossing her arms across her chest.

"Can I go to my church?" she asked. Whatever he'd expected her to say, it wasn't that; he didn't blink but the skin under his eyes tightened and his shoulders drew in slightly. He was not a man of large or dramatic motions; it was all subtlety with him. It was to his advantage. It made him much harder to read.

"Why?" he said. It was a question but it wasn't, too; the way he said the word was more like a challenge. It said, 'if you impress me enough, I might say yes'.

" 'Cause I miss it," she said and, unconsciously, her hand found the cross around her neck. "And because I don't like what I am, when I'm not there."

And it was true. She missed her church in a very different way than she missed her friends and her family; if they were an open wound, the church was an old scar, constantly twinging and plaguing her more and more as time went by. She missed it; she missed the incense and the chanting and the wise eyes of the saints. She needed it to survive this man who was now searching her with his gray eyes as though she was a calculation he was on the verge of solving.

She was certain he would say yes.

For what seemed like a long time, he just looked at her with that even, measuring gray gaze. She waited; sure he would say yes because he wouldn't want her even more hostile towards him then she already was.

The mask hissed.

"No," he said. Her mouth opened and she stared at him in shock, confused and with anger bubbling in her stomach.

"No?" she said, a tiny tremor of something that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite sadness but instead a strange mixture of both shaking in her voice. His eyebrows lifted slightly and he rose to his feet, holding the thin folder in one of his big hands.

"No," he replied, and his voice was an edict. Katty pushed off the counter and she felt the familiar buzz in her blood, that anger that was a _fire_, and the adrenaline spreading at the base of her skull, and the drop of fear in her belly that somehow made it all the sweeter.

"Why?" she demanded. The look Bane gave her was almost bored but it was annoyed, too, and it said very clearly to not test him.

"I don't need a reason, girl."

"But it won't hurt anything, I just want to go to _church_-"

He was walking away from her and she saw the knotted scar rising above his black shirt and he was probably a foot taller than her. "It doesn't matter what you want. The answer is no."

"But _why_-"

He turned around then, very quickly for such a big man, and the shutter behind his eyes had lifted and she could very clearly see his irritation, now, and there was a measure of power in that. She might not be able to get what she wanted but she could chip at that ice. He wanted to break her; it could go both ways.

"Because you are my prisoner." His voice growled over the words and his eyes flashed at her and he was so _big_, his shoulders were probably twice as broad as hers. "And it is time you remembered this."

Her eyes flashed and her anger made her stupid and reckless and all thoughts of her family, of the friends in danger because of her, fled her mind. The world disappeared and they were the only two players on a deadly, comsic chessboard.

"You're right, I'd totally forgotten about that, despite the scars and the PTSD and- and the fact that my city has turned into a goddamn ghost town-"

"It would be wise for you to stop speaking now."

His growled words were a command; he was not interested in bantering with her, or letting her mouth off at him, and it was etched into every visible line of his face. The ice in his gray eyes was riddled with fire and she could almost imagine the set of his mouth underneath that cold mask.

She jerked back, her mouth closing and she stared at him, her eyes searching his face and the tight, sloping sweep of his shoulders. There was no pity there, and very little humanity.

"Fine," she said, and she heard the ice in her voice. "Have it your way, then."

She turned on her heel and strode into her room, slamming the door behind her. She had no idea what to do with her rage; it filled her and consumed her and she stalked in circles around inside her room, flexing her hands at her sides. She felt like an angry five year old that had been denied a toy by a parent, only it was more than that, so much more; with Bane, every argument was a battle and she hated losing to him. She hated being reminded that, at the end of the day, she was subjected to his every whim.

She was a prisoner.

She gave a strangled shout of sheer frustration and grabbed her pillow, throwing at across the room. She kicked the wall and tangled her fingers desperately into her hair, tightening them into fists until it hurt. She was trapped, on every side, and people were dying and she couldn't make a single move without hurting someone else. It was the most infuriating, painful thing she'd ever experienced; she was helpless, for all her rage and all her intelligence.

She sat down on the bed, put her head in her hands, and she cried tears of anger and pain and fear and hopelessness.

She wanted to go home.

000

He knocked on her door a few hours later and then all but dragged her out into the living room for another "lesson", although this time, he didn't try to teach her as much as he did try to destroy her. Her anger made her stupid and bold and she tried again and again to hit him; the blows were nothing to him. He never hit her, but he didn't have to. He used her body against her, used her arms to deflect her own blows, used the momentum of her failed kicks to send her sprawling to the ground. She grew angrier the more she failed and he remained focused and silent and inhuman and there was a hurricane behind the stillness in his eyes.

She did land one hit on him. She swung at his shoulder with her right fist and he caught it easily in his massive hand and then her other fist was swinging up and she punched him in the ribs. Her punches were, to a man like Bane, merely annoyances, and her left side was even weaker than her right, so it wasn't a very good hit. But it was still a hit and he still looked at her with something like surprise in his gray eyes, his brow furrowed and his fist tightening around hers. They stood like that for a few seconds, glaring into each other, his hand wrapped tightly around hers. Katty was breathing heavily and she heard that he was, too, though his breaths reached her ears as mechanical rasps.

"Good," he said, his growl of a voice smooth, though his eyes were somehow burning and still at the same time. "You do learn."

There were a hundred things she wanted to say and not enough languages on her tongue to say them all in, so she decided to say nothing. His hand was very warm around hers and, after a few seconds, he released her and straightened up, his hands falling to his sides and Katty saw him flexing his left hand, the hand he'd caught her fist with, moving his fingers quickly against his thigh, almost as though he was playing a piano. His eyes flashed from her face to her shoulders.

"You're bleeding," he said, his mechanical voice expressionless. She looked down and to her right; there was blood spreading from her shoulder. She swore.

"_Damn _it."

When she looked back up he was watching her, his gray eyes unreadable.

"Where'd you put the bandages?" she asked him.

"Your stitches need to be replaced," he told her, and she blanched, jerking backwards a little. "The skin around them has torn."

"Fucking _hell_-"

"You have quite a mouth on you." He sounded slightly amused but it did not reach his eyes. "Stay there."

He disappeared into his room and came back a few seconds later with a first aid kit. Genuine fear began to bubble in Katty's stomach; she was not a fan of pain and doubted he would be kind enough to give her some of the medicine she'd made.

"I suggest you take one of your pain pills," he said mildly, proving her right, as he put the kit on the counter and opened it. "This will not be pleasant."

"Awesome."

She took the pill and went back to the living room, wishing very much that she'd listened to Langer, and Bane was waiting for her, a tiny, curved knife in his big hands and a needle and surgical thread on the counter beside him. He gave a terse nod in the direction of the table and Katty sat down on one of the chairs, heart pounding.

"You'll need to remove your shirt." His voice was expressionless.

Her heart, very literally, skipped a beat. It was not a pleasant feeling; for that less-than-a-second, she felt as though she was falling and drowning and suffocating, all at once.

"I'd rather not."

He raised an eyebrow just slightly. "If only the world revolved around you and the things you'd _rather_ not do."

She knew there was no point arguing. She grabbed her shirt and pulled it off over her head in a jerking, graceless motion, her shoulders burning with pain, and then she twisted her hands into it so that she'd have something to hold. Bane's eyes didn't leave her face but she still had the feeling that he was drinking her in, and she didn't like it. There was a scraping sound as he grabbed another chair and pulled it up next to her, and then he sat down, put on big hand on her shoulder, and began to remove the stitches.

He was right. It wasn't a pleasant feeling and it did hurt, but it wasn't too bad; it was a painful and uncomfortable tugging. She looked down at the wounds and they were not pretty; small and red and bloody and shredded looking.

'They will scar." Bane's voice was low and filtered in her ear. His hands pulled at the inflamed skin.

"Great," she said through gritted teeth, and thought, _like this month hasn't left enough marks on me already._

It didn't take long for him to pluck away the remains of the old stitches. The initials wounds had mostly healed, but there were new, smaller tears around where the stitches had been that were now bleeding. The skin was ragged and really quite nasty, Katty thought, looking down at her right shoulder. He poured hydrogen peroxide onto a cotton swab and held it against the angry, bleeding wound, and she hissed at the sting. She was the kind of person who watched the needle going into her skin and she watched now, as he took the needle and thread and began pulling it through her ragged skin.

The sensation that accompanied it was not merely unpleasant; it was excruciating. The needle moved through flesh that was already painful and he stitched her up. He wasn't gentle and he wasn't cruel; he was efficient.

A shock of pain shot through her and she inhaled sharply, looking up as involuntary tears of pain filled her eyes and her hands twisted more tightly into her shirt, clenching it between bruised fingers. She felt Bane's gaze flicker to her face.

They didn't speak. He finished her right shoulder, re-bandaged it, and tapped her leg to tell her to move them around his. She tried to maneuver her legs around his much longer ones so that her left side was no angled toward him. She closed her eyes in those few seconds on non-pain, even though her right shoulder throbbed. He leaned in, very close to her, and she was surrounded by the familiar smell of him.

He started on her second shoulder with that same uncomfortable tugging and pulling. It was a very strange sensation, to have thread pulled through her skin, like she was being taken apart. He cleaned it, then, with another cotton swab and dash of hydrogen peroxide and then he was sowing her up again.

She did look away that time, biting down hard on her lip as tears filled her eyes.

_I am so tired of crying._

Soon enough it was done and he rose to her feet. She pushed a hand past her eyes and followed his movement, though her legs were a little unsteady under her. He washed her blood off of his hands in the sink and she stood where she was, feeling very tired and very weak and very useless. The oxycodone was beginning to buzz in her blood but it didn't take away from the weight behind her eyes, or the hopelessness that was beginning to wrap around her bones. She twisted her shirt in her hands, not wanting to lift her arms up again to put it on, and then she walked past Bane and grabbed a cup. He turned around from the sink and she felt his eyes following her and that time they did rake up and down her shirtless torso. She, strangely, didn't care, and filled the cup up with water.

When it was full, she drank it down in long, gasping gulps and then tossed it behind him into the sink; his eyes remained on her and for a minute they stood there, him leaning on the counter with his hands clasped in front of him, her by the fridge with her arms hanging by her side. She wanted to say something smart and sarcastic and angry, she wanted him to know that she might be his prisoner but she was still her own, but nothing came to mind. He didn't seem to feel the need to say anything; he just watched her and she suddenly felt as though he'd watch her forever if she let him, with those eyes cold and eternal above the mask.

"I'm going to bed," she said quietly, breaking the eye contact and turning away from him.

He said nothing.

She went in her room and splashed water on her face before staring at herself in the mirror. Staring was too polite of a word- she glared at herself, measuring and calculating, planning and quantifying, a thousand different plans and scenarios and equations running through her mind. She thought of John Blake, of her family, of her friends- she thought of the man in the mask and of his hands on her waist, she thought of her body and the power she knew it carried, of her church and incense and Barsad and guns and of the war she knew was coming.

She closed her eyes.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Rise and Fall" by Sophie Hunger

A/N: Hello awesome people! I hope you enjoy this chapter and that the length made up for the extra day of waiting. Man I know I've said this like ten times already but you guys are seriously the best readers on the planet. I LOVE to here your thoughts and your criticisms and your predictions, and i DO take it all into account when I'm writing.

I have officially finished the outline of the story! It's a very loose outline, because sometimes the scenes develop and take on a life of their own and I want to have the freedom to do that. The more comfortable i become with the characters, the more it happens, haha. But there is definitely an outline and the plot has been building from day 1. I'm trying to keep this story very realistic in terms of the emotions i think the characters would be going through, as well as the fact that sometimes the plot (in real life) takes a while to become clear, while compromising that with literary necessity. IT'S HARDER THAN IT SOUNDS but it's awesome because this story is really challenging me, forcing me to think and go deeper into characterizations and what is actually possible, what is most true to the characters, etc. So it's really good for me as a writer.

ANYWAY. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and, as always, I absolutely can't WAIT to here your response! YALL IS THE BEST

Paradisical


	13. Sacrificial

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_There's a reckoning a'coming  
it burns beyond the grave  
there's lead inside my belly  
'cause my soul has lost its way_

Oh Lazarus, how did your debts get paid?  
Oh Lazarus, were you so afraid?

When the fires, when the fires have surrounded you  
with the hounds of hell coming after you  
I've got blood, I've goot blood on my name

**Chapter Thirteen: Sacrificial**

Kathryn Sherman was the first revolutionary, and by far the best, but she was by no means the only, and when Bane's sources told him that there was a gang that had been building explosives and hoarding weapons, he took a few of his men and followed the icy streets of Gotham down to the warehouse where they'd been waiting and planning. He didn't know if they were remnants of Kathryn's army and he didn't care; they would be dead before the day was done. He felt no anger towards them, no emotion at all. Talia had a plan and Gotham would abide by that plan and the rebels would die.

All the rebels except for one. His captive, his little, brave, stupid, pretty, fiery, _good _little captive- she would not die. No one would lay a hand on her. She would live and she would see this city for what it was and then she would break.

_Maybe._

His source told him that the group of rebels was small; only about fifteen, and that their plan involved planting homemade bombs in the apartment building where Bane had made his home. He did not need a particular plan to take them out. He took fifty men, a megaphone, a lot of firepower, and when they'd surrounded the warehouse, he lifted the megaphone to his mask and spoke.

"Citizens of Gotham, your liberator has found you and has seen that you have been left wanting… we know of your plan. We know of your weapons and of your explosives. Come out of the building now, unarmed, and we will allow your families to live. If you try to fight, your children will share you fate."

The megaphone gave a shriek and then fell silent and Bane let his hand fall to his side, the megaphone held loosely in his grasp. The old building in front of him was silent in the falling snow and there was only one exit; the one Bane and his men now surrounded. He thought, with a level of amusement, that the rebels picked a horrible base of operations.

The door opened and a few people came out in a single file line, their hands held above their heads. Bane's ruined spine tingled and then the line split and about five men charged out, guns held aloft, and it all descended into chaos. Gunfire filled the air and Bane let his instincts, honed by years of use, take over as he immediately dived for the ground. He disliked guns, personally; he believed that if you were going to kill someone you should at least do it with your bare hands, but now was not the time for retaining the morally high ground- one of his men dropped beside him and Bane grabbed his gun, hooking his finger behind the trigger and rolling behind a dumpster for cover. The sounds of more gunfire reached his ears and he looked around the dumpster to see that his remaining men- most of them- had taken cover, and then he leveled the gun in his hands at the rebels.

When the air fell silent, the snow was splattered with red and not one of the rebels was left standing. Bane rose to his full height, letting the gun fall carelessly to the ground as he strode out from behind the dumpster to survey the full extent of the damage. Only two of his men were dead and maybe five more were injured; he gave those a cursory glance and then turned his icy gaze to the dead rebels, sprawled out and spewing red onto the snow.

"Take their weapons," he said over the hiss of his mask and Barsad and the others began moving systematically through the bodies. Bane turned away, uninterested.

"Sir," one of them called just a minute later. "Sir, this one's alive-"

Bane turned around slowly and moved over to his kneeling soldier and the bloody man lying next to him, his boots crunching the thin layer of snow with every step. The man on the ground was pale and had blood leaking out of his stomach; Bane looked down at him with no pity.

"One day-" the man gasped, his eyes flashing to Bane, "-one day you'll- you'll pay-"

"Perhaps," said Bane, raising an eyebrow. "But not today."

He turned to Barsad.

"Hang them where the world can see. Do not clean the blood. And use their explosives to blow that building to hell- the world should know that we will not abide any more revolutionaries."

000

Gotham had been teaming with people filled to the brim with chaos; people who craved destruction in the deepest parts of them; people who were just looking for a leader. One of these people was a pale blonde woman in her early thirties named Harlene Quinzel, and she was waiting for him outside of the apartment that now served as Holly Wakefield's prison. Quinzel had been freed from Arkham Asylum with dozen of other inmates and she'd joined the liberation not two days later; she was reliable and paranoid and had a habit of developing a hero worship of anyone she looked up to.

"Did you discover anything useful?" Bane asked her now, and the blonde woman nodded, brushing stringy, dirty hair out of her eyes. She handed him a cracked iPhone with shaking hands and he took it, his eyes flicking from the screen to the woman's face.

"I recorded it," she said. Her eyes were a very pale shade of blue, like the under bellies of fish, and she had probably been pretty, once. "It's all on there, everything she said-"

"And what did she say?" his voice was a low rumble as he turned the tiny piece of technology over in his hands. A grin spread across Quinzel's face.

"She didn't wanna talk, at first, she's very loyal, but I slapped her around a bit, threatened her family- anyway, it's all on there." She nodded at the device in his hands. "Unfortunately for you, though, your little golden girl don't have much dirt on her-"

Bane's mask hissed. "Doesn't."

"What-"

Bane's eyes flashed up to hers. "My little golden girl _doesn't _have much dirt on her. Continue."

Harlene Quinzel looked a little shaken and blinked those pale eyes a few times before continuing. "Well, uh, all I mean is… she's never really done anything bad. The girl in there-" Quinzel shoved a thumb over her shoulder at the door that concealed Holly Wakefield, "-says she's a good daughter, good student, fantastic friend. She's majoring in Graphic Design but wants to do about five thousand different things, including working for the CIA-"

Bane almost rolled his eyes. Of course she did.

"- she goes to church and is just generally a… a good person."

The mask hissed. "And what did she say of her weaknesses?"

"She trusts too easy. The girl in there says she'll trust anyone if she sees even a speck of something good in 'em- she's brave, to a fault, but I'm guessin' you know that one already."

Bane said nothing and Quinzel continued. "But- as far as things you can use against her- I'm afraid it ain't much. Either she don't-"

Bane's eyes flashed.

"- _doesn't _talk about her weakness, or she doesn't have any, or that girl in there is lying about them, but she doesn't have many cracks."

"She has one," said Bane, to himself as much as to the woman in front of him. Quinzel's look was questioning and confused and Bane looked from her to the closed door that hid Holly Wakefield. "She has people she loves; that makes her weak. Keep up the good work, Miss Quinzel. I will be taking this."

He pushed the iPhone into one of the deep pockets of his shearling coat, turning on his heel away from the thin blonde woman, and he strode back into the cold and the snow of the city he'd freed. He checked the time in the clock on the lobby of the apartment complex; it was nearing three in the afternoon. His 'little golden girl' would be home before too long.

When he got back to his apartment, the first thing he did was check the digital pad that tracked Kathryn Sherman's whereabouts and pulse. What he saw turned his blood cold and caused his eyes to narrow in anger- the girl was not at the hospital, nor was she on the roads between the hospital and the apartment. No, she was a mile away from where she should be, at least, and when Bane tapped the digital dot that marked her presence, a box of information popped up with the address and name of the building where she was-

48 on 15th, Saint Elizabeth's Orthodox Church.

Bane looked at the dot that marked her for a few minutes, his blood buzzing. He knew she was foolish but this went beyond that; this was a level of stupidity he hadn't expected to see from her, as her particular brand of stupidity was tied directly with her bravery, no; this was something different. This was careless. This was meant to provoke him.

Very suddenly he shoved the pad into his pocket with the iPhone and then he strode out of the apartment, and when he left the elevator at the ground floor, he summoned Barsard and told him to get ten men.

"Find four civilians," he told the vacant eyed man, his voice a growl under the hiss of the mask. "Bring them to 48 on 15th street. I will be in the building. Bind them, gag them- get them on their knees and wait for me outside."

And then he stormed out into the cold of Gotham.

000

Katty could not stop shaking. Her hands shook, her body shook, her eyes were red and raw and she felt numb and broken and horrified at the same time.

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, the incense filling her lungs and it calmed her. She breathed in and out, focusing on the incense, the smell and the taste of it, on the tiles under her knees, and slowly she came back to herself. The shaking didn't stop but it became less violent and slowly, her teeth stopped chattering.

She knew she didn't have a lot of time but she was trying not to think about it; she didn't want to think about Bane or Gotham or the hospital or the woman who'd been brought in, covered in burns-

She screwed her eyes more tightly closed.

_No. No. No-_

_Get out of my head._

But it was no use. She'd never be able to escape the burned body, the smell of singed skin or the _screams-_

She rose to her feet sharply and leaned forward until her hands found the cool wood of the icon and she leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Christ's outstretched hand.

"Help me," she whispered, and felt tears slide down her face. "I don't know what to do, I don't- I can't do this-"

She had no idea how long she stayed like that, pressed against the icon in the empty church with silent tears rolling down her face, but she knew she was running out of time. She'd left, run out of the ER like a coward and hadn't stopped running till she'd reached the church. There was a back door that was always unlocked and she'd climbed in that way and the church was empty and she still couldn't get the images or the screams out of her mind.

They were out of anesthesia, of course they were, and it was her fault, another black mark on her soul, and there was a new shipment coming in from the mainland but it hadn't, yet, and Langer wasn't sure when it would and so they had to start the debridement without any sort of analgesic.

Katty was a strong person but she wasn't strong enough for that. She couldn't handle it, the smell of the skin, the sound of it being peeled off of this woman's body, and the worst, the very worst, the screams, animalistic and wild, that ripped out of that woman's throat as her skin was ripped off her body. Katty had run for the trashcan after ten minutes, retching, and then ran out the door with Langer shouting after her.

_Coward coward coward coward_

The only thought in her head had been to get away; it was a completely animal reaction and she'd never needed to be human more than she did then, and she'd failed him, Dr. Langer, and that poor woman-

But the church brought peace. It always had and it always will- the incense filled her, wrapped around her bones, and the familiar sight of the icons and the altar behind the iconostasis brought calm to her. The candles weren't lit and the church was empty but it didn't matter- the place was holy.

She leaned against the icon of Christ and she prayed.

000

It was not hard to find the back door, and when Bane entered the temple, he saw the girl, leaning against a wall filled with paintings of old saints, her forehead pressed against the outstretched hand of the figure he recognized as Jesus Christ. He saw her face in profile; her messy hair was pushed behind her ears but it fell around her face now, framing her in a curtain of shaggy gold. Her eyes were closed and he recognized the tear tracks on her pale cheeks and he realized she hadn't come here to provoke him, after all; but it changed nothing.

He could smell, under the mask, but the scents were filtered and weakened. He smelled incense, now, light and cleansing, and it was mixed with the faint scent of gardenias. He knew this faith; he could see its history in the wall of icons, in the golden altar behind the wall, in the candles hanging around the room- it was Christianity, a very old sect of Christianity that he remembered from his time in the Middle East. He remembered the priests, kind and wise in their robes, and he remembered members of the League who'd also been members of this faith; it was much more prevalent in older parts of the world. How curious, that she was a part of something so old. He wondered how it had molded her.

He took a few steps forward, his hands grasping onto the straps of the bulletproof vest we wore, and the second she heard his footfalls, her golden head whipped around and her blue eyes went wide as her full lips parted in utter surprise; in those few seconds, he saw no lie, no deception in her pretty young face. And then she closed her eyes in something very much like resignation and her watched her jaw clench.

"Would you believe me if I said I was coming back?" she asked quietly, and then her eyes opened. Her hand remained on the icon. Bane's mask hissed.

"It doesn't matter; you disobeyed me."

Her eyes flashed and her shoulders tightened. "You aren't my father."

He raised an eyebrow and his eyes raked over her body. "No… but I am your captor, and you should have learned by now that it is not wise to ignore my orders."

She looked very much like she wanted to spit his words back at him, her dark brows furrowed over those blue eyes, her hand on the icon forming a fist. The cross on her chest glinted in the low light.

"I didn't ignore them," she said, her voice quiet but biting. "I just- I needed to breathe, and I forgot-"

He moved closer to her, his steps slow and even and threatening. "My dear… you are not allowed the luxury of forgetting."

Her eyes didn't leave his and they burned. She was biting something back, he knew it, he saw it in that blue fire, in the set of her soft mouth, and he wondered why she was holding back now when she'd never done so before. He wondered if it had something to do with the church, with her hand on the icon.

"Alright," she said, her voice calm and her eyes anything but. "Fine. Can we go?"

His eyes flicked up and down her body again. Her hands were shaking and she seemed unsteady on her feet and the tear tracks were still wet on her face. Something had happened to her- she had not been attacked, he would have known, her tracker would have told him. Something must have happened at the hospital. It didn't matter what it was but he still wondered; she was not a girl who panicked easily.

His mask hissed. "As you wish."

He gestured with a single, sweeping motion of his arm to the main doors at the front of the church. Very quickly, Kathryn made a motion with her right hand that crossed her chest and shoulders and forehead and then she leaned forward, cross and hair swinging, and she kissed the icon. It was a sudden movement and it seemed very natural to her and in those few seconds, when he saw the look of utter peace that fell over her pale features, he realized that it would not be as easy to break her as he'd thought.

_Such a strange thing to draw strength from,_ he thought as Kathryn turned away and walked between the rows of chair, her blonde head held high. His eyes flickered over the icon carelessly, and the painted Christ stared back. He looked at the figure for a few moments and when he began to feel that Christ was looking back, he turned on his heel and strode away without a second thought.

He was only a few steps behind Katty, his legs being much longer than hers, and he was directly behind her when she unlocked and pushed open one of the double doors. The gray light and the cold hit them both like a wall and then Kathryn stopped, stunned, her body tensing- Bane pushed her forward, out onto the steps that led up to the church, and let the doors swing closed behind him with a solid bang.

There were four people on the ground in front of them, one woman and three men, with gags in their mouths and their hands tied behind their backs. They were kneeling on the hard, cold ground and each one had a mercenary behind them with a gun held to their heads. Their eyes were panicked and wild and grew even more so when they fell on Bane. He, however, was watching Kathryn, who seemed to be frozen.

"I told you," he said, his voice amiable under the mechanical hiss, "that I would kill anyone between you and I if you were to ever run. However, I think these four will be enough for today, don't you?"

"No," she said, and her voice cracked. "No, please-"

"Really?" his voice rolled over the word. "I can find more, if you like."

She whirled around then and there was no anger in her face, only a desperate pleading. "Please don't, I'll do whatever you want-"

He regarded her for a moment with no emotion in his eyes. He believed her.

"Barsad," he said without taking his eyes off of hers. He saw relief flood her face and looked up to meet the younger mercenary's eyes.

"Kill three of them."

"NO-" she shouted, whirling back around, and she lunged forward and he grabbed her by her arms, pulling her back to him, crushing her to his chest.

"You will watch this," he said evenly.

The people kneeling on the ground were struggling, muffled screams coming from behind their gags, and the girl in his arms was straining violently, instinctively, and he tightened his grip around her arms.

"Bane," she was saying, her voice desperate and wild and he liked the way his name sounded on her tongue, "-Bane, please, _please_ don't do this, it was my fault, hurt me-"

"I am," he said, and then he nodded at Barsad.

Three guns fired into the still winter air and Kathryn screamed, "NO!" over the sounds of three bodies falling onto the snow-dusted concrete.

She stopped struggling and stood there; he felt her breathing against him and could almost see the look of shock and horror on her face.

And then she started to shake and he realized she was sobbing. He held her, maybe longer than he should have, but when he did release her she stumbled away from him and grabbed onto the rail for support, her shoulders shaking. He couldn't see her face and she made no sound; he watched her for a few seconds with no expression on his face above the mask, before turning back to the ten mercenaries and the one remaining civilian.

"Cut him free," he said, and the mercenary behind the kneeling man bent forward and cut through his bonds with a quick, jerking motion, and then he pulled the gag out of the man's mouth, shoving it deep into his pocket. The man stared up at Bane, horror and fear and anger etched into every line of his face. Bane gestured to the three bodies, spilling blood onto the snow, as he climbed down the steps that led to the church.

"Would you like to know why they died?"

The man didn't move and Bane turned, angling his body and sweeping his arm towards Kathryn.

"_Her_. She is why they died- this little child has yet more blood tainting her soul."

She straightened up, then, slowly, turning to face him, her shoulders squared and her face shining with tears. She didn't look at Bane, though, but at the man kneeling at his feet. Her eyes were unreadable; there was something in them that was neither fire nor ice but a burning mixture of the two, and she stood higher than all of them, alone on the steps to the temple. For a moment Bane did not speak and just looked at her, drinking her in, and when he spoke again, his voice was a growl underneath the mechanical hiss.

"Would you like to know the name of your angel of death?" His eyes did not leave Kathryn and her eyes did not leave the kneeling man. He felt something like pride and something like anger because he knew what she was doing; she was accepting the mantle he was placing around her shoulders because she believed it. She saw the blood on her hands and believed that she had become the harbinger of death. Not many people could do that, and certainly not many twenty year olds who had lived their lives in relative comfort. It was no small thing, what she was doing, and it robbed him of his power.

He tore his eyes away from her face and looked back down at the man in the snow. His mask hissed before he spoke and the words, when they left him, were calm, his tone a parody of kindness.

"Kathryn Sherman," he said. The man's face did not changed but he looked from Bane to the girl on the steps, something unreadable in his gaze. "They died because of the impulsiveness of this- one girl, this young revolutionary. Go. Tell your family and tell your friends. We will not stop you."

The man rose to his feet and, after one last horrified and angry glance around the lot of them, turned and ran through the snow.

Bane turned his head to look back at Kathryn. The mask of strength had left her and her eyes had closed again, tears shining on her face. She held onto the railing with a white-knuckled grasp and Bane turned to Barsad.

"Dispose of the bodies," he said, his mask hissing over the words. Barsad nodded and then jerked his head at Kathryn.

"And her?"

The mask hissed again. "Oh, I'll take care of her."

He reached up and grabbed the front of the vest before moving back to the stairs, not taking his eyes off her. She opened her eyes and they were bright with tears and with fire and he felt a wave of wanting jolt through him. She hadn't broken, and he was almost glad of that because she was so _interesting _this way, fiery and desperate and so _good_-

"Come," he said, his voice light under the mechanical growl, looking up at her. "It's getting late."

She climbed down the steps, unsteadily, still gripping the railing with a white knuckled grip, and her eyes did not leave his. He just watched her. She stopped moving when she reached the ground and just looked up at him, tears fresh on her face, her eyes dark and her mouth set in a hard line, and Bane almost felt the urge to laugh.

Almost.

Instead he regarded her for a moment, his eyes expressionless, before turning away from her and walking in the direction of the apartment they shared.

He didn't have to look behind him to know that she was following.

000

The horrors of the day weren't over; of course they weren't. Bad things come in threes and this day could be no exception.

Her mind was numb but it was buzzing, too, all the way back to the apartment. She walked beside Bane and ignored him, staring with wide and unseeing eyes at the snow under her feet as she cycled through a thousand different plans in her head before rejecting all of them. She heard the hiss of the mask next to her, and the steady thud of footfalls, but she ignored that too, not wanting to think about him or acknowledge his existence.

Dr. Langer had told her to be careful. She thought he'd just been warning her not to fall in love with the masked psychopath at her side, and not to let him fall in love with her, but she was wrong in a way that had proved deadly. He was warning her about something much more, warning her that her actions affected so many more people than just her now, and he was right and three more people were dead.

They climbed into the elevator and she made a list of the blood on her hands.

_The man she'd killed that first night._

_Abby James._

_The two men she'd killed to save her brother._

_The three people at the steps of the church._

Seven more black marks on her soul- like she wasn't damned enough as it was.

"I have something for you," Bane said mildly as the doors slid open. She said nothing though her heart skipped a beat and she stepped out of the elevator after him, watching him dig into his pocket and then he tossed her what looked like an iPhone and she caught it, reflexively, her brow furrowing as she looked at the screen-

Her jaw dropped and she gave a soundless gasp, her eyes widening as she took in the familiar face on the tiny, cracked screen and all that it meant-

He had her best friend. He had Holly Wakefield, tied to a chair, looking into the camera with her mouth open. She thumbed through the pictures with shaking hands. They were all Holly. All in the same clothes, the same room, the same chair- she was bruised and dirty but her eyes were filled with ice and her lips were set in a familiar, stubborn line and Katty was very careful to not let her thoughts show on her face.

He only had Holly. Bane was logical; if he had taken one, he'd take all of them because the others would have disappeared the second Holly was taken. And, if he had taken all of them, their pictures would be on this cracked little iPhone as well.

Bane had been bluffing. She didn't know how long he'd been bluffing but she knew in her gut that she was right- he only had Holly. He had no idea where Brooke or Caroline or her family were, and he probably hadn't for a while.

Something inside of her cracked; she would realize, much later, that it was her restraint. He had one person for leverage over her, her best friend, and Katty knew exactly what Holly would do if the roles were reversed.

She looked up at him to see his eyes on her face and, wordlessly, she handed the iPhone back to him. His expression did not change.

"Keep it," he said, his mechanical voice rolling over the words. "Consider it an early Christmas gift."

She glared at him for a few minutes, her heart pounding with the weight of everything she had to do, and then she turned on her heel and strode into her room.

She tossed the phone carelessly on her bed and grabbed her sketchbook, tearing a piece of paper out of it and then tearing a smaller strip off of that before scribbling on it, furiously, thoughts of a man named John Blake and of a hollow brick in her mind-

There were two words scrawled on the sheet of paper.

_I'm in._

**To Be Coninued**

* * *

"Blood On My Name" by the Wright Brothers

A/N: Man this chapter was HARD to write. Bane is just tough to pin down.

I wanna address something really quick. Yes, this story WILL turn into a romance. However, it is not going to be something that happens quickly because that wouldn't be realistic at all, and that sort of thing puts me off as a writer AND a reader. Bane is not an especially tender character and Katty is his captive and not at all happy about it, so it would be extremely out of character for either one of them to go all gushy and super super lusty. I've gotta build up to it; this story is absolutely a slow burn. So, if you're here because you want some quick sex and a really smutty story, this probably isn't the story for you. There are plenty of really good stories like that on this site, but this is not one of them. The story is rated 'M' mainly for the psychological manipulation and torture that has and will be occurring, along with language, violence and material that i really don't feel is suitable for young readers; NOT for graphic sex scenes. There will be a romance and a physical relationship and everything that that entails, but I won't be writing a graphic sex scenes because i don't feel that the story calls for it. There are stories when explicit sex can enhance the plot/characterization/relationship, but this is not one of those stories. I hope that this doesn't put anyone off but I've gotten a few reviews on the subject so I figured I'd go ahead and address it here.

ALSO if anyone is interested, you can follow me on tumblr. There is a lot of insanity.

paradisical815 . tumblr . com

remove the spaces and you should be good.

AS ALWAYS! Thank you so much for your feedback! I can't say this in many ways I haven't already said it but I love love looove hearing from you and I love posting these chapters cause I get so excited about the reviews. You guys are the best reviewers I've ever had and i can't wait to hear what you think about this chapter!

Paradisical


	14. Human

_**She Rises**_** by Paradisical815**

* * *

_He could fall and she can weep  
But as holy are my feet and hard with mention  
That dear they may not speak  
We feel tight when there is tension  
And our eyes can make us weak_

_And his heart was full of fire at the man he had become_  
_And his soul seldom higher with the falsities of fun_  
_Could embrace sweet desires and moments as they passed_  
_But he feared it ever more, when he saw it didn't last_

_The grey in this city is too much to bare_  
_The grey in this city is too much to bare_

_And I believe we are meant to be seen and not to be understood_

_And I want to be held by those arms_  
_I want to be held by those arms_

_You'll work your thumbs they are sore_  
_And you'll work my heart till it's raw_  
_And you'll call and you'll call but you'll never be told_  
_And I'll fall and I'll fall and I'll fall_

**Chapter Fourteen: Human**

He was surprisingly kind to her the next morning. Well, not kind, not in the strictest sense of the word; it would be more accurate to say that he was not cruel and, with a man like Bane, it was almost the same thing. She doubted he was capable of genuine kindness. He sat at the dark table, his hands folded in front of him, his eyes above the mask following her as she left the darkness of the hallway. She really wished he wouldn't wear the black shirt; it made him look human and almost attractive (who was she kidding- if it wasn't for the fact she hated him she'd have admitted to herself a long time ago that he was absolutely her type, at least physically and very much minus the mask) and that only made it more difficult for her.

"Good morning," he rumbled, and she gave him a very dark look as she started to mix her coffee; his eyes looked like they contained a hurricane behind them.

_Nothing good about this morning_, she thought very loudly but didn't say, turning her back on him as she opened the fridge. To say that she'd slept poorly was an understatement; her dreams had always been extremely vivid and that resulted in some spectacular nightmares, but the ones she'd had last night had been a whole new level of fucked up.

She felt his eyes on her and her hand on the handle of the coffee cup tightened until it was painful. It was a physical sensation, his look. She felt it with her whole body, a buzzing, tingling sensation that was very much like adrenaline, and she felt it in her spine, like someone was following the string of bones and nerves with a finger-

_Fucking hell._

She grabbed a banana and peeled it furiously before scarfing it down in only a few bites, still facing away from him as the coffee bubbled and boiled in the pot. It was strange, to have such a normal soundtrack to such a surreal part of her life.

Very suddenly, at not for the first time, she wondered if she would survive this man. Even if she did, she knew she'd never be the same, and she felt a burst of longing for the loud and laughing girl she had been.

"You're normally at the hospital by now," Bane commented, his voice conversational under that mechanical hiss, and she didn't have to look back at him to know his eyes would be stormy and still at the same time. The coffee maker beeped and she poured herself a cup of the steaming liquid.

"I didn't think you'd let me go," she said, stiffly, refusing to look at him. "After yesterday's massacre."

His filtered chuckle seemed to wrap around her bones. "Your service at the hospital is invaluable, my dear." She hated the way his voice always dropped when he said those two words; how it _slid_ over them. "You are providing help and comfort to the people of this great city; I would not dream of keeping you from your work."

"In that case," she said shortly, turning around to face him, her hand gripping the mug very tightly to keep her hand from shaking and she clenched her other hand on the edge of the counter until her knuckles hurt; his eyes burned, "d'you know that we're out of most of our medicine, including anesthetics? Yesterday we had to debride a woman without any sort of pain medicine, that was just- _super_ fun-"

His mask hissed. "Is that why you ran?"

Her hands tightened on the mug and the counter. "Yes."

His eyes searched hers with that cold, measuring gaze. It was very interesting, how his eyes could burn and freeze at the same time. Unsettling as hell, but interesting. "I believe a shipment of drugs will be coming from the mainland soon; it is time for a shipment of food, as well. The hospital should be restocked before the day is out."

"Good," she said, her voice flat. "Seeing as it's my fault that we ran out so fast- and yours, of course, I can't take the blame for this one completely."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Think your potions come for free?" she asked him, her voice falling low, and his eyes flashed in warning.

"There is a cost for everything."

"Hm," she said, and drank a few mouthfuls of the scalding liquid, not taking her eyes off of his. "So what'll it cost for you to let me go?"

She saw surprise flit across his eyes and the mask hissed before he spoke. "More than you could stand to pay."

She looked at him for a few minutes, clutching the hot mug in her hands, her eyes searching his. He let her look and gazed back at her, his eyes calm under the furrowed brows. She noticed a scar in his right eyebrow.

"Alright," she said quietly, and chugged the rest of the steaming liquid. "I'm out, then."

She went back to her room and pulled on her boots before grabbing her gun and shoving it into the front of her pants. She took the tiny, folded scrap of paper with the two explosive words and shoved it into her bra and then she took a deep breath, feeling very much like she was standing on the edge of a great cliff.

She walked past Bane without a word and felt his eyes following her until the elevator doors slid closed behind her.

000

She reached the alley that John Blake had pointed out to her and, after checking to make sure that there was absolutely no one around, quickly pulled the scrap of paper out of her bra, wriggled the brick out of the wall, put the paper inside of it and shoved the brick back where it was. She left very quickly, turning the collar of her coat up against the wind as her heart hammered.

It was done. She felt a rush of exhilaration mixed in with the fear; for better or worse, she was doing something. She had no idea where it might end or what could possibly come of it, but it was done.

She wondered how many people would end up with bullets in their brains because of what she'd just done.

The hospital was only a few minutes away from the alley with the hollow brick and the promise it contained. She felt nervous, in the pit of her stomach, underneath the adrenaline and the raw, scrubbed feeling that reminded her endlessly of the trauma of the day before. She kept thinking of Langer's face, angry and disappointed, as she bolted for the door, and then the faces of those strangers with horror and tears in their eyes-

Her stomach plummeted and suddenly she stopped and bent double, retching and shaking. Tears stung at her eyes and she gasped for breath, the weight of all the blood on her name pulling at her like an immeasurable pressure. She remained bent over, her hands on her thighs, after the contents of her stomach had been emptied onto the snow-dusted sidewalk. She felt something in the pit of her belly; a heavy black stone that weighed down everything she was. It was not the first time she'd felt it, but it was by far the worst. This was a guilt she couldn't scrub away like she had then, years before, when she'd first learned the measure of a soul; she'd scrubbed at her lips in the shower till they were raw and bloody, unable to face her own reflection- she'd been so much younger then but it was a horrible foreshadowing, a taste of what came with the man and the mask-

_Get it together._

She drew in a deep, shaking breath, and pushed her hand across her eyes and then her mouth and then she straightened up. She focused on the street, on the collar of her coat brushing against her neck, the way her hands felt in the pocket, her bra riding up on her back, the uncomfortable itch of the bandages on her shoulders-

Two years before, when she'd been in therapy thanks to a man and a kiss and a criminal investigation, a kind woman with dark eyes had told her to focus on the present when the guilt became so strong she couldn't breathe. She said to focus on the wind, on her hair in her face, on the smells and the sounds- to lose herself so thoroughly in her own senses that she couldn't think.

And so she did.

000

The mercenaries stationed around the hospital eyed her as she walked past them and she ignored them as best she could, holding her head up high and focusing on the weight of the gun, pressed against the tender skin between her hipbones. It was a reminder and a contract and a strength and she was glad for it; a girl with a gun was not a target.

Heat hit her when she pushed inside of the hospital and found herself facing the massive, empty lobby. Her every footstep echoed as she walked past the receptionist's desk and they were even louder when she began to climb the stairs. She didn't trust elevators, not anymore, not with the power on the fringe, threatening to go out any minute. She wondered absentmindedly what she and Bane would do when it finally gave out.

It was not difficult to find Tom Langer. He was in the OR, like always, and at least today it didn't look like there wee any life threatening wounds; when she pushed open the door she saw him stitching up a gash on the outside of a teenage boy's thigh. The grimace on the boy's face confirmed her worries that the shipment of medicine hadn't come in and she felt a spike of fear shoot through her; without antibiotics, any size of wound could be a death sentence. Including the boy's, and absolutely including hers.

The boy looked up at her and his brow furrowed. She waited for Langer to finish, standing awkwardly near the door, and he spoke without turning around.

"I didn't expect you to come back." His voice wasn't unkind but it wasn't exactly warm, either, and she swallowed.

"I'm sorry about yesterday. I just- I panicked, and-"

A sudden image of blood on the snow flashed behind her eyes and her stomach clenched. The boy was watching her and Langer waited, the tiny, curved needle moving steadily through the boy's skin.

"Anyway," Katty continued, her voice low and weak and she cleared her throat and when she spoke again, it was stronger, "I'm sorry."

Langer didn't speak again until the gash was stitched completely, and then he taped a wad of gauze over it and motioned for the boy to pull his pants up and then he turned to Katty. He looked like he'd aged decades overnight; his thin face was drawn and his eyes seemed very bleak.

"I heard what happened," he said, his voice quiet. "At the church."

Her stomach plummeted and twisted.

"If you want me to leave," she said, quietly, unable to meet his eyes, "I'll go, I don't blame you-"

"Will you shut up and listen?"

She started and fell silent and for a few minutes she and Langer just looked at each other. The boy zipped up his jeans and Langer broke the eye contact between them, turning to the brown haired teen.

"Come back tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have antibiotics by then; keep that thing clean unless you wanna lose your leg, you hear me?"

The boy nodded and gave Katty one last, perplexed look before darting out of the door behind her. Langer gave a great sigh and rose to his feet, snapping the gloves off of his hands and tossing them into the trashcan before running his hands under the stream of water from the faucet. He didn't speak until he'd dried them off and turned around to face her, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I told you to be careful," he said, and there was no accusation in his voice. Katty nodded, feeling tears sting at the back of her eyes. She forced them down.

"How'd you find out?" she asked, and forced herself to look at him. His eyes were very serious.

"The man that Bane let live told everyone he saw, and word spreads fast when it comes to Bane. The three people he killed were dragged off the streets. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

_And it's my fault._

She gave a slow nod as her stomach twisted more and more; she felt like she might be sick again.

"You gotta _think_, Katty," said Langer, softly. "Your actions affect more people than just you. Bane knows the best way to hurt you is to hurt other people and- obviously- he doesn't hesitate to do that. You can't just go swannin' off and bein' impulsive. You have to- everything you do, you have to think through everything, look at everything that could happen. Or more people will die."

She could only give another nod and this time she felt too numb to cry. She looked away from Langer and instead stared at the soap dispenser above the sink. She heard him sigh and then he was moving to her and pulled her into a hug. She let him, wrapping her arms around his thin waist. It was tangible and real and it pulled her back; the touch gave her an anchor. There was nothing romantic or sexual about it- she was fairly certain Langer was gay- and it was comforting.

"Alright," he said gruffly after a few minutes as he pulled away from her. "No more sappy stuff, and now more impulsive stuff." He pointed a finger at her, raising an eyebrow. "Okay?"

She nodded again and she thought of John Blake, of the hollow brick and of the two words that could change everything.

_What have I started?_

000

The first half of the day was calm. The only new injuries were minor, things that Katty easily took care of while Langer checked on the older patients, the ones that were still there for more serious reasons, the burn woman from the previous day included. Katty went around dealing with the less serious injuries, stitching up gashes and checking for concussions. She liked it; she liked talking with people, worn and scared as they were, and she liked feeling as though she was helping.

The burned woman was going to live. She'd survived the most critical stage and the worst of the burns were on her arms and stomach; her face and the rest of her body was largely unharmed. She was in an extreme amount of pain and Langer had an IV in her arm, ready to hook her up to a pain drip as soon as their stores were replenished.

It happened a little differently than they expected.

Katty was in the ward with the rape survivors, talking about things that weren't important but that _were_, even if only because of what they represented, when she heard the shouts. She jumped to her feet immediately and barged out into the main hallway, tripping over her own feet in the haste to find out what was going on. Langer was in front of a group of men, his white coat billowing behind him as he shouted orders. Katty's stomach clenched when she saw the men following him- dirty and militaristic with guns slung over their shoulders- they were carrying crates and there was a man on a stretcher- it was Barsad.

She looked around at all of them again and noticed the blood, dust, the gashes in their clothes- it looked like they'd been in a blast zone.

"Katty!" Langer shouted. "Get the crate- no, not that one, you imbecilic moron, the one with anesthetic-"

One of Bane's men handed a bag filled with clear liquid and she took it gingerly, her eyes searching Langer's in confusion.

"That's the pain medicine," said the doctor, speaking very quickly. "Go get some hooked up to the burned woman-"

"- how much-"

"-five hundred milligrams, and come to the OR as soon as you're done. Go, quick-"

And then he was turning away from her, leading the horde of mercenaries through the hall. Katty hoisted the crate up in her arms, turning on her heel- the woman was a floor down-

She heard the telltale hissing of the mask and her head shot up to see Bane sauntering towards her and her heart plummeted to her feet.

"Having trouble?" he asked, his mechanical voice sliding over the words.

"No," she said shortly, and pushed past him, feeling his eyes on her until she disappeared down the hallway.

She took the elevator that time, holding the tiny bag gingerly in both hands, and when the doors opened with a 'ding' she all but ran to room 114, where the burned woman lay in a fitful sleep on her bed. Her hands shook as she hooked up the bag of anesthetic to the IV in the crook of the woman's elbow, but she was done quickly and then she was running.

By the time she reached the OR, the majority of the mercenaries had cleared out and only Bane, Barsad and Langer where in the room. She ignored the former too and went straight to Langer, and she reached into the crate of pain medicine by his feet before tossing a bag of it to Langer. He caught it and hooked Barsad up; the mercenary was under in seconds. Katty straightened up, panting, and pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail as she ran to the sink to wash her hands and pull on surgical gloves.

"What the hell happened?" Langer was asking Bane, his voice slightly distorted behind the surgical mask. Katty pulled one of those on, too, the elastic snapping into place above the root of her ponytail and then she turned to join the two men.

"I took a detail to the bridge to collect the medicine and make sure it arrived here safely," Bane said evenly, and he was speaking to Langer but his eyes were on Katty. "There was a significant possibility of it being stolen." His eyes flashed to Langer then. "On route here, we were attacked."

That explained the blood and the dust and the massive piece of metal shrapnel sticking out of Barsad's leg.

"By who?" asked Langer curtly. He took a pair of scissors and began cutting Barsad's pants away around the wound; Katty focused on that, wishing very much that Bane was not there and that he wouldn't look at her. "Katty, the iodine-"

She handed it to him, feeling Bane's eyes on her.

"Two people," said Bane, and a bit of a growl crept into his voice for the first time. "A man and a woman, both in costumes."

Katty's head shot up in surprise and she met Bane's eyes. "The Batman?"

His eyes were dark and unreadable above the spider-like mask. "No. The Batman is dead."

Katty felt ice wrapping around her stomach and she suddenly felt as though she was falling.

"This man was wearing a purple suit and make up, and he had red scars on his mouth."

If she felt like she was falling before, now she was plummeting and she could not keep her emotions off of her face; her jaw dropped and her eyes widened and Langer stopped what he was doing, Katty's emotions were mirrored on his lined face.

"Are you serious?" he said, loudly, and Bane looked to him slowly, his eyes burning. It was all the answer that was needed and Katty and Langer exchanged a look.

"You freed- fucking- _Arkham?_" Langer spat when he could speak again, his eyes flashing onto Bane's. The masked man did not respond but his gray eyes were a warning. "That's great, now on the top of the rest of it, we get to deal with the goddamned Joker! That's- wow, we are _so_ fucked."

"He is a fool in a costume," said Bane, his growl of a voice carrying something dismissive in it. "He is of no consequence."

"Did you do any homework at all when you came here?" Katty snapped, fear making her foolish and rash. "Do you have any idea what happened last time the Joker showed his face-"

"I am aware of the carnage he unleashed, little one." His voice was a warning and his eyes were unreadable.

"Then how can you say he's 'of no consequence', he's a walking disaster zone, he's- he's chaos incarnate-"

Langer kicked her under the table and she fell silent. Bane's mask hissed as his eyes flashed between the two of them, and Katty could feel him searching for a bond that he had not predicted would form.

"You said there was a woman?" asked Langer, and he pulled the shrapnel out of Barsad's leg. Blood began to ooze out of the wound.

The mask hissed and Bane's eyes remained on Katty's face. "Yes."

"Any idea who it is?"

Katty refused to look at him. There were a few moments of quiet and when he spoke next, his voice was a quiet edict.

"The girl and I will leave you to your work, doctor. Barsad is an invaluable lieutenant; I will be most displeased if he does return to full health."

"Wait," said Langer, quickly, his gloved hands ceasing their movements on Barsad's bloody leg, "I need her to stay-"

"To remove a piece of shrapnel and stitch him up? If you truly need assistance in this endeavor than I have overestimated your competence, Doctor."

"It's alright," said Katty quietly, and she turned her back on Langer and followed Bane out of the room.

The hallway was empty and she very much wished it wasn't; she didn't want to be alone with her captor. When the doors swung closed behind her she pulled off her gloves and her mask and she dropped the lot of it into a trashcan, and Bane's eyes were on her when she finished. She realized for the first time that he wasn't wearing his coat and then she noticed the slick on his right shoulder where the rough material stuck to his skin.

"You're bleeding," she said, without thinking about it, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Truly, Doctor Langer has made a detective out of you." His voice was amused underneath the hiss of the mask but his eyes were dark and she tried to ignore it.

"You should get it stitched up," she said, stiffly, and that time both of his eyebrows lifted.

"Are you not going to offer to do it for me, my dear?" he asked, his voice sliding over the words in a growled, mechanical challenge.

"Wasn't planning on it," she said, shortly. His eyes searched hers and she knew he was smiling under the mask and she hated that he was being kind to her, in his way; she hated this banter that grew between them when the battle calmed. She hated it because it was easy and she hated it because she didn't, really; she _enjoyed_ it and she knew she should hate it.

She remembered suddenly something that Langer had told her when she first started at the hospital. One of the inmates from Blackgate had come in, holding his guts in with his hand, and after Langer had him stable, Katty had asked him why he would take his time to save this man. Langer had fixed her in a very serious look.

"It isn't my job to pass judgment, kid. It doesn't matter if the devil himself shows up on my doorstep, it's my job to stitch him up and sort him out. Someday this man will have to stand and be weighed for what he's done, and my only part in that is making sure he's alive for it."

She drew in a deep breath, feeling Bane search her face.

"Follow me."

To her surprise, he did so without comment, and she flicked on the lights in one of the check up rooms.

"Take off your vest and your shirt," she snapped, rummaging around in the cabinets, pulling out supplies. She heard him moving behind her, head the rustle of shifting clothes, and she really did not want to see him with his shirt off. The scar that wound its way done his bare back was unsettling and his skin was smooth and not tanned, not exactly, but dark under a layer of pallor.

She said a quick prayer and turned around, clutching her tools in her hands. Bane was standing in the middle of the room, shirtless and massive, and she saw the blood pouring down his arm and she nodded at the table.

"Sit."

He did so and she pulled over the tall, mobile table and she set the supplies on it, arranging them so she had easy access to all of them, feeling Bane's eyes on her the whole time.

"Why haven't you used the medicine I made you?" she asked as she poured hydrogen peroxide on a cotton swab. Bane's mask hissed.

"Why do you think that I haven't?" he asked, his voice a low rumble.

"Cause I haven't seen you with your mask off," she said and she pressed the cotton swab against the bloody line in his arm. He didn't flinch or tense and she remembered that he wouldn't feel any pain; it was a relief and a disappointment at the same time.

"And of course you see everything," he said wryly, and she didn't respond. She didn't want to banter with him, not after yesterday; she'd fix him because it was her job but she didn't want to be kind to him and she didn't want to talk to him.

She didn't try to get all of the blood; she cleaned the gash gingerly and then she threaded the tiny, curved needle. She grabbed his arm, under the blood, with her left hand to steady herself and his skin was warm and soft and she did feel him tense, then, and knew that she did hold a measure of power over him, after all. She put the needle at the beginning of the gash and slid it through his skin.

"So you can feel touch," she said calmly, "but not pain?"

His mask hissed. "Yes. The gas the mask administers goes directly to the source and blocks pain receptors. Pain is the only thing I do not feel."

She didn't have to look at him to know his eyes were burning into her; the words carried a weight, something behind them that wasn't quite a threat or a promise or a challenge but a mix of all three.

_Blood on the snow_-

Her stomach clenched.

"That's special," she muttered under her breath, and she felt his laugh inside of her as much as she heard it.

"Many words have been applied to me, my dear, but I do believe that's the first time 'special' has ever been used."

"I don't mean, like, 'butterfly' special, I very much mean 'Timmy, stop eating the paste' special. Why do you need it, anyway?" She knew the answer to her question- she could see the knotted scar tracing up his smooth, muscular back, and she didn't expect him to answer and she knew she was poking at a sleeping dragon, but she asked anyway.

"Be careful, little one, " he said, his voice a low growl of a warning. She didn't push it but she wanted to; it was burning inside her. She wanted to know how he'd gotten the scar, why he was tied to Talia al Ghul, and more than that- Talia said that he'd saved her, and Katty could see they went way back. He'd probably saved her when she was a teen, or a kid, and how the hell did a man like that become the man she was now stitching up?

There was quiet between them for a few minutes and Katty screamed at him in her mind, careful to keep her face impassive as she pulled the needle through blood-slicked skin time and time again. The silence was broken by the hiss of the mask as he breathed.

"An interesting reversal, don't you think?" he said quietly and Katty glanced up at him before she could stop herself.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice expressionless. His gray eyes were measuring and unreadable and dark.

"Normally, I am the one putting you back together. Strange, how the roles can be reversed so easily, isn't it?"

"I'm just doing my job," she said flatly, raising her eyebrows at him. "When someone's hurt, it's my job to fix them, not to pass judgment."

"Now, that's a shame," he rumbled, sarcasm tainting his words. "You would make an excellent judge."

They looked at each other for a few more seconds; more accurately, he kept her pinned in that dark gaze and she glared back at him, hating him almost as much as she hated herself.

She broke the gaze first, looking back down at his blood-slickened arm, bathed in the gray light from the windows.

"I'd be fair, at least," she said with a measure of poison in her words. "I'd let people defend themselves."

His chuckle wrapped around her, settling somewhere deep in her belly, and his arm moved as he laughed.

"Stop moving," she snapped.

"My dear, you are ruled by your emotions; logic has no place is that big heart of yours."

She felt a stab of anger but didn't respond.

"A leader… a _judge_ cannot be led by their emotions."

"No?" she said, not looking at his eyes and instead focusing on the needle moving through his flesh, wishing very much he could feel pain because she was not being gentle. "What, then? Their desire to do good? To actually help people? Their logic, their kindness? You seem to have all those down."

"The leader should not be the judge; it is the leader's- the _ruler's_- job to bring a plan to fruition, and, yes; by whatever means necessary, my dear. A ruler cannot do that if they are ruled by their heart; they must distance it from themselves."

"Or remove it completely, am I right?"

There was a beat of quiet and she did not look at him; her blood was buzzing with anger. She watched his chest rise and fall as he breathed.

He was the most alien human she'd ever met.

"If that is what's necessary."

Her stomach clenched.

_Bodies thudding against the concrete; three people who'd never see their families again-_

"So, you'd rather rule by fear?"

"Yes."

She finished the last stitch and tied it off and when she looked at him, she felt the fire behind her eyes, she felt it in the buzz of her blood and the tingling of her skin.

"That's going to be your downfall, Bane. You rule by fear and people will always be tryin' to find a way to see you die, even people like the Joker, who live for chaos and who aren't much human anymore, either. But if you rule by love, if you rule by what's _right_- people will die for you."

His mask hissed and his eyes were narrowed. She could imagine a mouth under the mask, forming the words- but all she saw was the metal tubing.

"And what do you know of ruling, my dear?"

"I raised an army in two weeks," she said softly. "How long did it take you to raise yours?"

He leaned forward, very suddenly, and their faces were only inches apart. His voice was calm but his eyes were burning and she knew she'd hit a nerve; it didn't matter than the army had nothing to do with her, that she was only the spark that ignited the fire. What mattered was that she'd done it.

"The revolutionary," he said, his impassive voice rising and sliding over the words. "Gotham''s would-be savior- how much blood is on your name, little one?"

"Not nearly as much as on yours."

"Yes, dear, but, you see- I am not _tormented _by the knowledge of the deaths I have caused. Not like you are." He growled the word. "You will be tortured by the horrible knowledge that you have caused the deaths of innocent people until the day you die."

"Is that supposed to be something to be ashamed of?" she snapped, her eyes flashing. "In what world is it a bad thing that I- I grieve people's deaths, that I know the- the name of the weight that's on my soul-"

He did something then that she could never had expected. He reached up and took her chin in his hand, his thumb sweeping suddenly over her lower lip and it wasn't kind, it wasn't sweet; it was an intimidation tactic and she fell silent as a jolt of fire shot through her. His eyes were dark and stormy above the mask and she needed to say something, she had to keep talking but she couldn't _think; _why did he insist on touching her, why did she _burn_ when he did-

_Blood on the snow- gunshots filling the air and three sets of eyes staring without seeing at their own blood-_

"You will break," he said, his voice quiet and there was no doubt in it at all as he held her chin and forced her to look at him. "You will break under the weight of all the blood on your soul."

She couldn't think. Her head was spinning and he was much too close; he smelled of blood and smoke and chemicals and she looked at the line of his throat under the mask, tried to not notice the slope of his body under those broad shoulders, but there was no use for it because she noticed everything and she was surrounded by him; how could she _not_ notice him?

"If it didn't break me," she said, her voice shaking as she forced herself to meet his eyes because she could not lose to him; this was a battle and she could not afford to surrender, "then there would be nothing human left about me."

His eyes flickered between hers and then flashed to her mouth and he ran his thumb lightly over her cheek. Her stomach flipped.

"And would that be such a bad thing?" he asked, his mechanical voice raw and quiet. His body was so close.

"There's nothing worse," she said, and she could get no real strength behind her voice. He made a quiet noise behind the mask as his eyes continued to search hers. When he next spoke, his voice was so quiet she almost didn't hear it but she felt it; he was close enough she felt his chest rumble with the words-

_"_You set too much store by humanity, my dear."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Alpha Shallows" by Laura Marling

A/N: This chapter was so much fun to write! Yes, especially the last scene :). The tension is slowly building up! It's difficult to find the line, because i need the tension to develop and build, but as there is nothing normal about their relationship, it's sometimes difficult to determine what is too much and what isn't. So, if you have any constructive criticism, I would absolutely love to hear it!

I'll try to update two more times this week, but I don't want to make any promises. Classes start next week (and I have 8 o clock classes every day but friday why did i think that would be a good idea) and updates will most likely slow down thanks to homework/social life all that fun stuff. But I have no plans to abandon this story! I have to many ideas and things I want to explore.

Can't wait to hear what you think! I AM VERY MUCH ENJOYING THE ART YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN MAKING OH MY GOSH. IT JUST VD;SVNNDSB;DBSNGJKGF IN MY SOUL. If you have made something, feel free to send it to me! Chances are my response won't be coherent AND IT'S BECAUSE OF HOW EXCITED I AM

Paradisical


	15. The Arms of Lions

_**She Rises**_** by Paradisical815**

* * *

_I am outside_  
_And I've been waiting for the sun_  
_With my wide eyes_  
_I've seen worlds that don't belong_  
_My mouth is dry with words I cannot verbalize_  
_Tell me why we live like this_

_Keep me safe inside_  
_Your arms like towers_  
_Tower over me_

_'Cause we are broken_  
_What must we do to restore_  
_Our innocence_  
_And oh, the promise we adored_  
_Give us life again_  
_'Cause we just wanna be whole_

_Lock the doors_  
_Cause I'd like to capture this voice_  
_That came to me tonight_  
_So everyone will have a choice_  
_And under red lights_  
_I'll show myself it wasn't forged_  
_We're at war_

**Chapter Fifteen: The Arms of Lions**

It took Katty a very long time to get to sleep that night. She lay in her bed, cocooned in blanket, staring at the moonlight playing across the ceiling as a thousand different thoughts chased each other around and around in her mind. Her family was mixed in there, and her friends, and her seven ghosts, and Bane.

_Bane._

He kept _touching _her. He'd told her he wouldn't rape her and maybe it was dumb, but she believed him, and she hadn't expected this. She hadn't expected him to put his hands on her waist, or touch her lips almost gently, or stroke her face while his gray eyes remained dark and still. It was something much different from his calculated and brutish cruelty; it was torture of a different and equally potent kind.

Katty was no fool. She'd known for a long time the power her body could hold, and she hadn't been afraid to use it, when she needed to. This was different, though. This wasn't just someone she wanted to like her, or someone she wanted to leave her alone; this was Bane, hard and cold and calculating and ageless, and she was not in control.

It'd crossed her mind, of course it had; would things be easier if she could manipulate him into loving her? The more time she spent with him, the more she doubted he was even capable of love, and she knew that, for a man like him, sex would not endear her to him at all. So she'd abandoned the thought weeks ago, almost as quickly as it had entered her mind, but he still insisted on touching her. It was intimidation but it was something else, too. She'd seen how his eyes darkened when he cornered her against a counter, she'd felt him tense when she'd touched his bare skin only hours earlier-

She made a fist and let it fall on her forehead, scowling up at the moonlit ceiling.

"Goddammit," she muttered.

000

The dreams only got worse.

000

Bane remained cordial and almost kind to her over the next few days. He asked her how her day was when she got back from the hospital and, both mornings when she awoke from a restless and tortured sleep, the smell of coffee already filled the apartment.

She didn't have to ask him what the hell he was doing.

She heard nothing from John Blake until three days after she'd stitched Bane up. There was no word in the hollow brick, but her letter was gone the day after she'd put it in and she felt a thrill in her bones; she was doing something.

But, three days later, as she walked back with her gun down her pants and the stitches removed from her now completely healed shoulders, he stood there in the mouth of the alley, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat and his jaw tight as he looked around.

"John Blake," she called when she was closer to him and he looked around, his brow furrowed above dark and startled eyes. His face seemed to open when he saw her and they both glanced around; the street was deserted. Katty felt a sudden, insane urge to laugh; she felt like a teenager meeting a boyfriend her parents disapproved of.

Only her parents wouldn't go on a killing spree if they caught her with handsome John Blake. She tried not to think about Bane and what he would do if he found out- he _wouldn't _find out. And she wouldn't let him hurt anyone else.

"I didn't know if you'd come," said John Blake, as they moved into the alley and out of sight, his words manifesting as puffs of white in the cold air. Katty crossed her arms across her chest, tucking her freezing hands against herself.

"I didn't know I was supposed to."

"Yeah, well-" he looked around, his eyes narrowed against the winter light. "Keeping contact is hard, these days. People are losing power. Two families have frozen to death in the past week."

"Jesus," Katty breathed, and the laugh that John gave then was more of a bark; it was humorless and bitter and hard.

"Yeah, something tells me he doesn't have anything to do with this."

She gave a half-nod, raising her eyebrows in agreement. "What do you need me to do?"

"I need to know everything I can about him. I need to know about his mask, why he wears it, what medicine is in it, how often he changes the medicine, what happens if the mask comes off-"

"-well, I don't know anything about it. Not for sure, anyway, I- I know he had me mix a new drug for him so he should be able to take the mask off, but I've never seen him use it, I've never even seen him with the mask off-"

"Can you sabotage it? The mask, or the medicine you made him?"

"I honestly don't know, John. I have to be really careful, I can't do anything he can trace back to me, so I- I just don't know."

John Blake nodded. "Okay. I also need to know how many people he has around him, what he does during the day, who he trusts- where you guys are living, how many guards are there, who he visits, who's second in command, everything like that. Tell me everything you can about the building you're in. How many floors, how many exits, an estimation of how many people are there, and how many of them are Bane's and how many are captives."

She nodded. "Okay. I'll write it all down so that you got solid info. What are you planning?"

"The less you know, kid," said John Blake, raising his eyebrows. "Look, I trust you, but we can't pretend there isn't a pretty damn good chance that a lot could go wrong, here-"

Her blood ran cold and she thought of the massacre on the steps of the church.

"- and if something does go wrong, and he catches you and you tell him-"

She nodded. "Yeah, I understand. I gotcha."

They looked at each other for a minute, a strange sort of understanding passing between them. They were only two people in this war, but they were now two people who were no longer alone. They weren't partners, or friends, but they were in it together and there was a comfort and a weight with that.

"Can I ask what changed your mind?" John Blake asked her. His eyes were brown and warm, despite the serious look on his angular face. Katty drew in a slow breath, trying to control the images of bloodstained snow and ruined faces behind her eyes.

"He, uh… I- Bane killed… um, three people. Because I disobeyed him. He killed them on the steps of my church in cold blood and he made me watch. They didn't do anything wrong." Katty's voice was quiet. "They were just in the wrong place in the wrong time."

John Blake was quiet for a moment. "Didn't you say he had your family?"

"He has one of them. The rest have disappeared and I know what they'd want me to do. So... I gotta try and keep my head above the water, I have to do something, I have to fight-"

She felt the tears well up and she shoved her hand impatiently across her eyes. She was absolutely exhausted of crying and she knew there would be more tears before the nightmare was through.

"Are you okay?" John Blake asked her, and the smile she gave was bitter and hard.

"I have to be," she said, her voice only shaking a little bit behind the biting smile. John Blake nodded.

"I need to go," she said. "He's got a tracker in me, and if he sees me in one place for too long-"

John Blake was nodding. "Yeah. No, I understand."

She gave him one last nod and turned away from him, letting her arms fall to her side and shaking them out as she faced the still deserted street. She'd taken a few steps when John Blake called after her.

"Miss Sherman-"

She turned back. There was an odd look on his face and he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands- he made a helpless sort of gesture at her and then nodded.

"Thank you."

She gave him a slow nod and a tight smile that she knew wouldn't reach her eyes. She didn't need to say 'you're welcome' because they both knew how this could end, they knew words couldn't capture the weight of it and he _wasn't _welcome, not really. He was in her debt as much as she was in Bane's, and there were no words for that.

"Call me Katty," was what she said, instead, and then she turned back to the street, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans as she faced the cold winter sun.

000

The apartment was empty when Katty reached it and she stood right outside the elevator for a few minutes, a bitter anger boiling in her blood.

"Fuck you," she muttered to the man who wasn't there, and then she pulled her coat off and tossed it onto the couch.

"Fuck you," she said again, her voice light. "Guess what, Bane? FUCK. YOU!"

She was shouting and laughing and she pulled her gun out of her pants and threw it at the table in the kitchen, half hoping it would go off with a bang because she hated the silence that filled the apartment and she needed noise. It didn't go off but it slid across the table and fell to the tiled floor with a clatter; Katty was not paying attention, she was turning away, ripping her shirt off and tossing it on the ground, shouting "FUCK" at no one the whole time. She was moving towards the shower and kicked off her boots, shaking her leg so violently to dislodge the shoe that her ankle cracked and the expletive that accompanied it carried a new ferocity born of pain- she unbuttoned her jeans with quick, shaking hands and pulled them down off her legs in a jerking, graceless motion, tripping over them as they bunched around her feet.

She got into her bedroom and yanked her bra off, throwing it as hard as she could at the wall and then she tore off her underwear, throwing them after the bra- she slammed open the door to her bathroom and then she stood, panting and shaking, laughing and crying and damn near hysterical, unable to recognize the girl in the gilded mirror.

Oh, they shared identical features; a round face, a nose that was just slightly too big, an asymmetrical mouth and wide blue eyes that currently were brimming with tears of laughter and fear and anger, the shaggy golden hair was definitely hers, messy and frizzy at the ends; broad shoulders for such a short girl, tiny hands clenched into fists, big breasts and wide hips and a slightly chubby stomach, covered in fine white lines that had been tattooed by the point of a knife-

She'd been funny, once. Funny and loud and laughing, an almost stereotypical portrait of the classic 'comic relief' trope (most of the time, anyway, not even she could burn forever) and now she was this. Laughing out of desperation, a hard and shark-like smile twisting her features as tears slid down her face. The features were hers but she wasn't _Katty_, not anymore, not like she had been; this girl was different. This girl was covered in blood and gunpowder and smoke, this girl had a massive shadow looming behind her, a shadow without a face- more accurately, a shadow with half a face and dark eyes that held icy, ancient oceans-

Katty turned away from the mirror suddenly and climbed into the massive shower. She didn't bother to close the door to the shower behind her, it was made of clear glass anyway, it served no purpose but to keep in the water and she didn't _care_ about the damn water. She turned on the faucet with a quick jerk of her wrist and kept her eyes open as the water washed over her, first freezing and then warm and then hot. She didn't turn the heat to scalding this time and just stood under the cascade of liquid, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides as the black hole in her chest widened and threatened to pull her in.

"Get out," she hissed, staring at the slick wall of the shower in front of her. "Get out get out get _OUT-"_

Her voice rose to a shout and she felt her fingernails digging into her palms with a detached sort of satisfaction.

After a few minutes, when the hysterical desperation had subsided, she closed her eyes. She closed her eyes and she stepped backwards until her naked back hit the wall and then she slid down it until she was sitting in the corner of the shower, the tiles at her back and bottom cold even though the water that rushed over her was warm and full of life. She drew her knees up to her chest and put her arms over her knees and then she let her head fall. She was losing it and she didn't have the luxury to- she had to pull herself together and she had to do it _now._

Five seconds wouldn't be enough, maybe not ever again. She gave herself the length of her shower to panic, to be a twenty year old, to be a kid who wanted to decorate a Christmas tree (_Christmas is in five days and all I've got is Bane_) and sing carols and be with her friends, she gave herself a shower to drown in self pity; she gave herself a shower to be weak.

It had to be enough.

000

Her jeans, shirt and jacket were folded neatly and stacked on the counter when she emerged from her room about an hour later and she stared at Bane, who was sitting at the kitchen table and perusing a thick file and ignoring her.

"Why did you fold my clothes?" she snapped.

"Why were they strewn across the room?" he replied evenly, without looking at her. She opened her mouth but he cut her off and turned a page, and his voice was mechanical and smooth when it floated out from behind the mask.

"Whatever event caused you to unclothe yourself in the middle of the apartment, I should hope it doesn't become a habit."

"It's not like I offended anyone's delicate sensibilities-"

"No," he said, his voice rising smoothly over hers, and he did look at her, then, his gray eyes flashing above the mask, "but next time you may not be as alone as you think you are."

She let the promise wash over her like a wave of fire and closed her mouth, clenching her jaw. She grabbed the outer seam of her jeans with two fingers, clutching it tightly, letting the texture of it anchor her.

"Langer says my shoulders are healed," she told him, her voice flat, and he lifted an eyebrow slightly. "He took the stitches out today."

"Do you wish to resume our lessons, my dear?" There was a level of satisfaction in his amused voice, like he'd just won a battle she didn't even know she was fighting. She tightened her two-fingered grasp on the seam.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Several things to say crossed her mind and she said the most true of them: "I like hitting you."

He blinked. And then he laughed; it was not a pleasant sound. It was raw and grating and mechanical and his eyes crinkled up, wrinkles fanning out from the corners of the gray abysses and those eyes remained fixed on her as that laugh tore out of the mask. The most horrifying thing about it was that this was the first time he'd laughed at her with no mocking affection, no parody of amusement; this laugh was genuine and it unsettled her in a way that was primal and instinctual.

"I would not dream of denying you your satisfaction, Miss Sherman. I'm glad there is something I can do that pleases you."

She didn't rise to the bait and flexed her hands. He closed the file and unfolded his bulk, rising to his feet and walked slowly over to her, his eyes still lifted in a hidden smile. She realized, suddenly, that he was wearing black socks instead of shoes and that was so human, so _vulnerable_ that her breath hitched in her throat for a second. He spread his arms wide, his eyebrows lifting in challenge.

"Well?" he said. She took a step back.

"I don't learn anything by just throwing myself at you. You have to _teach _me. You need to tell me how to stand and how- how to swing my arms and how to block and all that. Otherwise it's not a lesson, it's just a- a-"

_Massacre_, said her mind and she rejected the word with a nauseous feeling in her stomach.

"-it's just you… beating me up," she finished, lamely. He raised an eyebrow.

"I will not be a good teacher, girl."

"Well, I'm not a good student either and honestly, it's not like you can get much worse than you already are. So how about we try something a little different?" Her voice was flat an impatient and his eyes searched hers. They were measuring and unreadable but she knew she'd surprised him. He gave a single nod.

"As you wish."

It would turn out that they were both slightly wrong. When not actively trying to destroy each other, they _were _a good teacher and student; Bane knew just about everything there was to know about turning a body into a weapon, and Katty had an instinctual knack for it that allowed her to follow the big man's pace.

"Plant your feet," said Bane, grabbing Katty by the shoulders and holding her in place. "Farther apart- good- lower your center of gravity and it will be more difficult for your opponent to knock you off balance. Bring your arms up, girl, _protect _your torso-"

She did what he told her too, wordlessly. She'd never actually seen him first hand in a fight against someone on his level (he'd crushed Rat Tails without even breaking a sweat) but she'd seen the footage from the bank robbery; every movement he made was direct and vicious and calculated. His fighting style was extremely raw; he made no unnecessary movements and every movement that he did make was perfect and deadly. She was not fond of him but in this area, she was perfectly willing to shut up and listen and learn.

He gave her a nod and took a step back "Good. Now hit me." He spread his arms wide and her brow furrowed. "Go on."

She swung at him, fist clenched and body twisting, and she knew as her fist collided with his hard stomach that it was a good punch; maybe not as good to _Bane_ as to anyone else, but it was still good.

She saw a flicker of surprise in his gray eyes. "Good," he said, and then he was rattling off again, talking more than she'd ever heard him talk at once before, about how important it was to follow one punch with another volley; how vital it was to decimate an opponent so that the winner was clear. There was no room for mercy in Bane's world.

They sparred for about an hour. Bane showed her how to throw a kick that could break bones; he showed her how to take a punch and absorb the impact; he wasn't really one for grips or holds (they were too defensive) but he showed her some of those anyway, his big hands wrapping gently around her wrists to move her arms into position, his body warm at her back and then her front and his eyes were dark when he pulled her close and showed her how to lock her arms around a body and hold them still.

Her heart was pounding. He had pulled her close to him, hands wrapped around her wrists and their bodies pressed flush against each other. He'd pulled her to him before, that in itself was nothing new, but it had always been her back to his chest; she never been pressed against him like this, her chest to his, the lines between their bodies blurred; she'd never been able to see the fire burning in his gray eyes, the fire that was a twin to the one in her belly. She didn't like to think about what might happen if the mask wasn't there, an impenetrable barrier between them-

His hands slid away from her wrists and they simply stood there, pressed together in the evening light that filtered in through the windows, and Katty's breathing was ragged.

_Step back_, she told herself. _Just move away._

But she couldn't.

_He's a murderer, Kat. This isn't someone you can fix with pretty smiles and prayers. __**Step back.**_

She did- just enough so that they weren't touching, so that she wasn't pressed up against the hard warmth of him, and his eyes followed her, burning.

"Why do you keep doing that?" she asked him before she could stop herself, her voice a quiet mumble. The visible half of his face didn't change and for a few seconds that only sound that floated between them was his mechanical breathing.

"Because I never know how you will respond," he answered her, quietly, his eyes very dark under furrowed brows. She didn't really know what she had been expecting but she still felt a shiver run up her spine and Bane seemed to know it; he looked like he might move to her again and she took a quick, stumbling step back, his eyes following her the whole time.

"Don't," she said, and her head was spinning, nothing seemed to make sense at all and she was suddenly very tired, "please don't- don't touch me."

She turned on her heel and walked back into her room, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. She felt Bane's eyes burning into her back until she turned into her room and closed the door behind her with a quiet click, and only then did she let herself breathe, closing her eyes and leaning against the door.

"I am so going to hell," she whispered.

000

Two days later, the Joker attacked again. It was the middle of the night and Katty woke with a start- she heard gunfire and shouts and explosions and she jumped out of bed and ran to the window, her feet in their socks flying over the cold floor. There was a red glow coming from a few streets over, and when she looked down she saw mercenaries running out of the apartment building and towards the chaos.

"Oh Jesus," she breathed, and then her door was thrown open. She whirled around to see Bane standing in the doorway and she jumped back in surprise.

"Get dressed," he said, his voice hard, and she saw his eyes flicker over her naked legs under her oversized sleep shirt. "Get your gun."

"What's going on?" she asked him, moving to the other side of her bed where her jeans were crumpled on the floor. Bane watched her as she pulled them on over her legs and she did her best to ignore the feeling of his eyes on her as she zipped them up.

"The Joker is making a nuisance of himself," said Bane, and there was something dark underneath the conversational tone of his voice that kept Katty from saying 'told you so'.

"What do you need me to do?"

His eyes searched hers. "He is targeting my people. I want you at the hospital, out of harm's way."

Well. She hadn't expected that.

She gave a nod. "Alright, just a second- let me get dressed-"

She grabbed her bra off the ground and glanced up to see Bane still in the doorway, still watching her. She stared at him.

"Bane, I gotta put this on. Give me two seconds, okay?"

After a moment he gave her a nod and he moved away, disappearing towards the kitchen- she pulled her shirt off over her head and heard a series of 'bangs' from outside the building.

The Joker was going after Bane's people. She didn't know how long that would last, if he'd start attacking civilians again, but she felt a powerful rush of sadistic glee. The Joker was not a good man to have as an enemy and Bane was learning this very quickly.

She fastened her bra into place and tugged her baggy shirt back over her head before grabbing her gun and her jacket and she slid her feet quickly into her boots and then she left her room, shoving her gun down the front of her pants. Bane was waiting for her by the elevator.

_He killed three people because I went to church and now he's getting me out of a war zone. This man is going to be the death of me._

"Okay, so what happened?"

"There was an explosion two blocks over about ten minutes ago, and a group of my people went to investigate. The clown and his little friend opened fire on them-"

"-your mercenaries can't catch two people?"

The look he gave her was not amused.

"It might be easier if anyone could get within a hundred feet of them."

Katty nodded and Bane continued.

"It seems they have set up a series of scheduled explosions across the city, all in places that are frequented by members of the liberation."

"Any civilians dead?"

His gaze was measuring and curious. "It would seem not."

She let out a low whistle; there was a bubble of sick happiness inside her, a relief and an amusement that was almost giddy because the whole thing was so utterly ridiculous. "It's a good thing the Batman hadn't shown up yet, Bane, or you'd really be in for a show. I _told _you not to take this guy lightly, he will burn your army to the ground and he will laugh the whole damn time-"

"He is one man," said Bane, his voice sliding over Katty's as his eyes burned into her. "He is one man with a gun and a partner and a few drums of gasoline. He is more nuisance than threat."

The elevator dinged and Katty raised her eyebrows at Bane as the doors slid open.

"You sure about the 'man' part?"

_Wow, he __**really**__ has the bitchy look down tonight._

The lobby of the building was empty and the chaos outside of the glass doors was growing; Katty heard gunfire and shouts and the dull 'thud' of small explosions.

Bane was moving quickly, his boots almost silent on the linoleum, and Katty followed him, her heart pounding as the adrenaline started to flow. It was cold outside the building and she reached down to flick off the safety on her gun with shaking hands. The shouts were louder, more frantic, now that they were not muffled by the walls of the apartment building, and Bane glanced in the direction of the fight before turning away.

"This way," he said, his mechanical voice terse, and she followed him down the streets.

"Uh, Bane," she said a few minutes later, forced to do a funny little skip to keep up with his much longer strides. "Are you sure the hospital is a good idea? I mean, it's surrounded by your army, and the Joker's never really taken issue with exploding a hospital before-"

"Then where would you propose we go?"

"Somewhere maybe _not _crawling in mercenaries-"

There was another explosion, this one much louder, followed by shouts for help and screams of pain. Both Katty and Bane whipped their heads around, their eyes searching the streets; they were alone, for now, but the feeling of danger pressed down on both of them like a suffocating blanket. Katty didn't finish her sentence and Bane sped up so that she had to practically run to keep up with him.

They got to the end of the street before the laugh found them and wrapped around them like silk wrapped around barbed wire- it was a hair's breadth away from being lethal and Katty felt the laugh crawling up her spine and cold spread throughout her body.

She turned around, vaguely aware of Bane doing the same at her side, and there he was- the Joker, a massive gun in his hands, illuminated from the back by fires and above by the streetlight he stood under. She recognized his silhouette, hunched, like he was caving in on himself, and there was a woman next to him, almost as tall as he was, willowy, with short hair of a color Katty couldn't determine flying around her masked face- she was _familiar, _the set of her shoulders and the length of her neck, but before Katty could place her, the Joker spoke.

"Well. Well. _Well. _What do we have… _here?"_

Bane said nothing but Katty felt him tensing next to her, his ice-like eyes fixing the Joker in an unblinking glare. It was hard to make out the clown's face but he seemed to smile and he hefted the massive gun up, pointing it at them and then Bane threw his arm out, shoving Katty behind him before she could react and then she pulled her gun out but his arm trapped her where she was and she tried to maneuver around him, pointing the gun at the Joker from behind Bane's back and under his arm-

This all happened in about two seconds. Bane was shielding Katty and she and the Joker had their guns trained at each other when the woman next to the Joker shouted, "STOP!" and Katty almost dropped the gun in shock because she knew that voice; she knew that girl.

It was Caroline Whitaker.

The Joker seemed to roll his eyes and his head turned with an inhuman speed to regard his partner.

"Not her," said Caroline. "We can't kill her."

"And why is that?" asked the Joker, tilting his head, his voice hard and irritated and almost exasperated. Katty's eyes were flashing between the two of them; Caroline seemed to have the Joker on some sort of a leash and, after feeling a powerful surge of pride, she eyed the streetlight that the duo was standing under.

"I'm going to shoot that light," she told Bane, her voice quiet. "When I do, _run._"

She hefted the gun and pulled the trigger once; there was a bang and a flash and the light above Caroline and the Joker shattered.

Katty and Bane ran. She heard the Joker's laugh follow them, maniacal and shrieking, but her heart was pounding and it didn't scare her like it should. Her feet pounded on the pavement and her eyes were darting around her as they turned from street to street, no longer running for the hospital but simply running for an escape.

There were new shouts, now, different. They were bloodthirsty and loud and after they'd been running for a few minutes, Katty glanced down a side street and saw a mob and her blood ran cold.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," she whispered. The Joker and Caroline were at the front of the mob like a nightmare come to life and there were so many people; all civilians, armed with whatever weapons they could find, and they hadn't seen Bane and Katty yet but it was only a matter of time.

"This way," said Bane tersely, and they darted down an alley, moving faster than they had before. Katty felt like her heart was about to beat out of her chest due to fear and running and adrenaline but she kept pace with Bane and soon the shouts from the mob became muffled.

"We need to find a place to hide," she panted as they burst out onto another street and there were no lit streetlights on this one, there was no power in this part of the city, and she skidded to a halt on the slick concrete. "Look, there-"

She pointed across the street at one of the private high school for the more elite of Gotham's teenagers. Bane nodded.

He broke a window on the side of the school and they climbed in, he much more gracefully than Katty.

The school was freezing and eerily quiet. They were in the lobby; there were trophy cases glinting in the moonlight and pictures of valedictorians with practiced smiles and Katty stared around.

"We need to go up to a higher floor," said Bane, his mechanical voice echoing around the empty lobby. Katty nodded.

Every sound they made was amplified. The school was modern and clean and slick, not at all like the public high school Katty had gone to, and it was creepy in its emptiness. They found a staircase and climbed up to the fourth floor, every step echoing, and Katty was starting to shiver despite her coat. Bane was silent in the darkness in front of her and she noticed that the fingers of his right hand were drumming an angry rhythm against the seam of his pants. She recognized his anger in the set of his broad shoulders under the coat and she wondered what he'd have done if it wasn't for her; she wondered if he would be stupid enough to charge into the fight. She doubted it. He was a lot of things; suicidal was not one of them.

They stopped in front of an open doorway and looked in to see a teacher break room. There were couches and a window that looked the way of the mob and Bane walked in, Katty following him.

"What should we do?" she asked him. He had moved over to the window and stayed just to the edge of it, looking out so that there was almost no target for anyone who might be standing on the street.

"Wait," he said, lifting an eyebrow, his mask hissing over the word, and then he turned his head to look at her. "There is no one to fight, my dear."

"There's a mob."

He gave a terse shake of his head. "To fight a mob is a folly; it is best to wait them out. This one will fade with the dawn."

"And how many of yours will they take out in the process?" Her voice was quiet and soft and his eyes searched hers as the lines were drawn yet again; they both knew that, if things were different, Katty would be out with the mob. She would be with the Joker and his Harlequin, stomping and shouting through the streets, taking back their city. She knew it and Bane did too; she was even deeper in his debt after this night, after the arm he'd thrown out to shove her behind him, but they were not on the same side.

Bane didn't answer her question and instead finally said, "You are shivering."

"There's no power and it's cold."

And she was shivering. She had her arms crossed and her hands tucked in her armpits, her coat zipped up to her throat, but it wasn't enough and her teeth were chattering. Bane eyed her, his gaze measuring and calculating and she got that feeling again, like he was standing at the edge of a cliff and contemplating jumping. She wondered what was waiting for him at the bottom.

"We'll have to stay here tonight," was what he said, his mechanical voice portraying no emotion. "We might as well make ourselves comfortable."

She nodded and moved to the couch, sitting gingerly on it and finding that it was actually fairly comfortable. Bane moved too, his body coiled like a lion's, and sat down right next to her and then he was actually _putting his goddamned arm around her shoulders_-

"What the hell are you doing?" she said, sharply through chattering teeth, as she jumped to her feet. Bane's expression was emotionless above the mask and Katty's heart was pounding in surprise.

"You are in serious danger of catching hypothermia," he said, his voice smooth and not at all matching his eyes under his raised brows. "I am- again- saving your life."

When she just stared at him he sighed and continued.

"Body heat is your best chance, girl, if you want to keep all of your extremities."

She knew he was right. The urge to tell him to go fuck himself was hard to fight but she _knew _he was right, and she was going to have to suck it up. She closed her mouth and clenched her jaw for just a moment and then she turned and sat back down next to him. He pulled her closer to him brusquely so that she was leaning against his chest and she could hear his heartbeat, strong and steady, and then his arms wrapped around her shoulders, his hand holding her in place. Her ear was right over his heart and he was warm through his shirt, and comfortable in a way that made her irrationally angry. She was pressed between him and the back of the couch and he stretched his long legs along the length of the couch, trapping her in place. She wanted to glance up, to see his face because she knew he was looking at her, but she was scared and instead stared at his chest, at the curve of his neck rising out of the shirt, at the soft material on the inside of his coat, and his fingers were gripping her shoulders so tightly and there was so much blood on his hands, and she wondered very suddenly if anyone had ever felt as safe in the lion's den as she did then.

_Safe._

She hated him, hated the mechanical breath that floated out of the mask, hated the smell of smoke and old books that surrounded her, hated how warm he was and how she'd stopped shaking and hated him for setting her blood on fire-

But, more than anything, she hated him because in that moment, in his arms while a mob raged outside, she felt safe.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"We Are Broken" by Paramore

A/N: Well, life got in the way of me doing more of this story this week. I do start class tomorrow, so probably only count on one update a week and MAYBE there will be two.

This chapter was... fun. It was absolutely one of those that developed a life of its own and went in a direction i hadn't been planning on, but I'm really happy with what ended up happening and I hope you guys like it too. The relationships and characters are suuuper fun to explore, and so is the psychological implications and issues that accompany bane and katty's relationship. so that's really fun.

I CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR WHAT YOU GUYS THINK I AM SO EXCITED TO HAVE REVIEWS TO COME HOME TO AFTER CLASS TOMORROW DS;GVKJSD;KMDFKDVVSD

Paradisical


	16. Dark Passages

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_Give me to the road_  
_Upon the heart_  
_That I had sold_  
_Warm my heavy hands_  
_My heavy hands_  
_For you to hold_

_There's a devil at your door_  
_And he grows, he grows_  
_So I been told he had a heart of gold_  
_And it grows, grows like a storm_

_Now the low lakes have frozen_  
_Away from home I'll go_  
_When the first snow has fallen_  
_Away I'll go_

_Give me to the ground_  
_I followed fires_  
_Toward the sound_  
_Cold upon the mountain_  
_To which I'm bound**  
**_

**Chapter Sixteen: Dark Passages**_  
_

The first thing Bane registered was warmth. He didn't jerk out of sleep, or slide out of it; he floated out of it, as though sleep was a place you could leave, in a way he couldn't remember ever doing before and found himself warm and comfortable and almost confused because he hadn't felt this relaxed, this off guard… this _safe _in a long time. Maybe not even in his whole life; but he slowly came back to himself, gradually becoming aware of different parts of his body- of his arms, wrapped around something warm, his torso, pressed against another body, his chest, with a soft weight on it-

_The girl._

He opened his eyes. The room in the abandoned school was filled with the gray light of snow-softened dawn and he looked down- his view was partially obscured by the mass of rubber and metal and tubing covering his nose and mouth, but he saw the girl, asleep on his chest, and he examined her with half opened eyes, his gaze measuring and calculating and bemused.

Sometime during the night she'd uncurled herself and stretched out next to him and she was sound asleep now, her blonde hair spilling across his black shirt. She'd moved her left hand and it was now pressed between her face and his chest, pillowing her cheek, and he felt her right arm pressing against his side, and when he looked down he saw that her right hand was forming a fist around her tiny silver cross. One of her legs was bent across his and he couldn't see all of her face, but even in sleep she looked pale and guarded, if much younger.

He knew she'd been having nightmares. She never cried out but he heard her muttering in her sleep and occasionally whimpering when he walked past her closed door after night fell, and she'd grown paler and thinner since the massacre at the church, the shadows around her eyes deepening as her face became harder and more drawn. He couldn't help but think that the look suited her. But she'd had no nightmares that night; she'd fallen asleep quickly, pressed against him on a stranger's couch, she'd slept soundly, and the only sounds she made in the darkness were deep, even breaths. Bane knew that human touch could bring an incredible amount of comfort- he and Talia had curled up together most nights in the Pit, for warmth and for comfort, and then after, when they both needed to be reminded that they were human.

_Back when you were human_, said something quietly in his head, and it almost sounded like the incredibly human girl who was now asleep on top of and beside him.

Bane felt something twinge that was half in his heart and half in his head and he ignored it; there were certain things on which dwelling served no purpose, and Talia and humanity were first among those things. What was important now was the Joker and the girl with him, the scattered revolts across the city, the power shortages, lack of food, the bomb that was going to go off in three and a half months, the medicine that would always be waiting for him, the medicine with the girl's intelligence mapped into it, Talia, the mask-

Bane closed his eyes, silencing his own stream of consciousness. His hand had slipped off Kathryn's shoulder in sleep and was now under her arm, resting high on her side, and he felt the curve of her body, warm and soft under his hand. Her breathing was deep and even; he knew that this was the first time she'd slept for more than five hours straight in several weeks.

His lips twitched under the mask. He was content to let her sleep; she'd wormed her way inside of his coat while they slept and she was warm and soft where she pressed against him and he was sure that she would be less than pleased when she awoke. He thought back to that evening a few weeks ago, when he'd taken her to the store; she had been almost a different girl, then, right after he'd saved her life. Cautious but calmer, less antagonistic, and it had been then that he'd seen who she had been before Gotham's liberation. She was joking, with an easy, flowing sort of humor, and sarcastic, and intelligent-

Not for the first time, he wondered what would have happened had he not decided to break her. She had something in her that craved to trust him, he knew it; they might have been something like friends. Or, at the very least, she wouldn't be constantly fixing him in that look that was guarded and measuring and burning with an ancient sort of anger. Bane didn't mind angry looks but there was something off about it, about her, about the look her face fell into in the moments between moments; it was not the look of a normal twenty year old.

But, then again, he supposed, she wasn't one.

She made a quiet sound and moved her hand from between her face and his chest, nestling her cheek into him, her hand curling into a fist and resting on his stomach. Bane watched her, without blinking, for a long time.

She slept for about another hour and then she inhaled suddenly, turning her head on his chest, and she made a quiet sound in the back of her throat and he felt her body tense and then relax again beside him. His lips twitched under the mask and he waited.

Her head shot up and she looked around, eyes wide and alert, her cheek red where it had been pressed against him, the right side of her hair very messy. She stared at him for a few seconds in complete confusion before her head whipped around the room, her eyes searching the windows and the corners and then she turned back to him, her brow furrowed, and he was actually smiling behind the mask because he could see the wheels turning in her head.

"…what?" she said, more to herself than to him, and he wondered if she remembered anything from the previous night. Then she blinked and something behind her eyes cleared and she gave a tiny shake of her head. "Oh. _Fuck."_

"Did you enjoy the absence of your nightmares?" he asked her, his mechanical voice amused. The look she gave him was flat and deadly and not very threatening at all since she was still curled against him.

"What time is it?" she asked him in reply, and he raised his eyebrows.

"I'm not a time piece, my dear, I have no more idea than you."

She muttered something that sounded very much like, "Lotta good you are, then," and then she sat upright. She swung one leg over him and for a second she was straddling him, her hips settling over his like a puzzle piece and their eyes locked and something dark and wordless passed between them, and then she was half sliding and half falling off of him. When she straightened up, the set of her shoulders was tight and guarded and it wasn't quite a challenge; it was a plea. It said '_don't touch me I don't know what I'll do if you touch me' _ and Bane understood something, very suddenly, something that had been nestled under his consciousness for a few weeks now. He rose slowly to his feet, following her, and watched as she pulled her boots on, her hair falling over her face.

"I need to go to the hospital," she said without looking at him, and he could feel her trying to anchor herself through her words. "There's probably gonna be a lot to deal with after last night."

He gave her a nod and raised his eyebrows. "Of course," he said, tasting the bitter note of mocking on his tongue, the mocking he knew she'd hear. She was always so eager to play the hero- he was starting to wonder what she hid under the noble façade, what dark skeletons.

Her eyes flickered over him, measuring and even, and she straightened up.

"I'm going to stop by one of the book stores on the way home," she said, evenly, something like a challenge hidden in her eyes. He raised his eyebrows.

"I brought you books."

She gave a half shrug. "I finished all of them."

His eyebrows lifted higher and he felt something in his gut that might have been surprise in a different man. "The average length of those books is seven hundred pages, and you have read them all?"

She shrugged again, not taking her eyes off of his. "I read fast."

"Clearly," he said, his voice rumbling over the word and betraying nothing that he felt. "Do as you wish, but be back at the apartment by four thirty, as usual."

She nodded.

"I will escort you to the hospital."

"No, you don't need-"

"Yes," he said evenly, his voice sliding over hers and she fell silent, "I do."

000

He left her at the hospital and returned to the apartment, surveying the damage the mob had done to the streets on the way. There were a few more broken windows and some pools of blood that had been mostly absorbed into the concrete and snow, but the city remained, for the most part, undamaged.

_Gotham was built of foundations of rot._

A wave of bitter amusement washed over him as he stepped into the elevator. His reflection glinted at him and he stared into himself for a few seconds before looking away.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open and he stepped out into the empty apartment as the smell of gardenias washed over him. He rolled his eyes as he pulled the coat off his shoulders and tossed it onto the couch; every inch of the apartment smelled of her, of laundry and of the white, tropical flower that flavored her shampoo with its scent. She showered often, more than normal, and he wondered how much of the time she spent under the burning waterfall trying to scrub the red off her skin. It would be a kindness to tell her it would never wash away, but Bane was not a kind man.

He walked down the hallway and turned right, into her room. There was a stack of books next to her bed and he picked them up, one by one, thumbing through them, his eyes flickering over the pages as they fanned in a smooth arc. She hadn't lied. Many of the pages bore lines from being dog-eared and she'd underlined different passages and phrases and there were notes in the margins in an untidy hand.

He checked the other books and felt a detached disbelief wash through him; each of the books was marked in this manner, each was imprinted with a piece of her mind, and he found that he was impressed. The books he'd picked for her were difficult, a test, one that she'd passed without even realizing it.

Bane liked books. He always had; there had been a few, in the Pit, and he taught himself to read first and then passed the knowledge on to Talia, though she'd been impatient about it and only acquiesced because Bane'd told her how much it would impress her father. And then, after- in the midst of training he'd devoured every book he could get his hands on, learning new languages just to finish a story, and his mind grew sharper and sharper as his body was turned into a weapon. His captive seemed to share this trait, this love of worlds contained between pressed pages.

At the bottom of the stack was the sketchbook he'd taken for her on a whim and he opened it to the first page and then his eyebrows lifted and he ran a slow hand over the markings on the plane of white.

She was talented. She was more than talented; the drawings were vibrant and alive in an eerie way and Bane felt a sudden sense of invasion, as though he was taking something from her than he hadn't previously known existed. The feeling didn't bother him but it was curious in an annoying sort of way and it was something he knew he'd need to address within himself later. He traced the drawings with a single finger, his eyes following the lines of graphite on the page.

The first thing he noticed was that she'd drawn him. The lines in that one were dark, hard, sketchy; he could feel anger and rage and confusion flowing off of every line of his drawn form. She'd drawn her friends, and those were smoother and softer, and he recognized the freckled face of Holly Wakefield. She'd drawn other things too, some of which made sense and some of which didn't; islands and guns and tattooed wrists. She drew eyes and mouths and jawlines; she drew a set of hands that he recognized as his own, big and bruised and perfectly rendered on the page. The word 'fuck' was scrawled with such ferocity that the page on which it was etched was torn in several places, and there were other words, too, quotes and song lyrics and names.

There was a rendering of her on the last drawn on page, and it was dated the day of the massacre at the church. She'd drawn herself from the chest up, naked and dripping in red. Bane raised an eyebrow at the black book in his hands as he realized just how thoroughly she'd accepted the mantle he'd placed around her shoulders; he'd called her the angel of death and so death she had become.

He wondered what books she'd come home with.

He wondered if Talia would come see him today; it had been almost a month since they'd seen each other. They both knew that she shouldn't, because it would be far too easy to draw attention to a relationship that should not be, but to have her so close after so many years and still be unable to see her was a torture that he didn't know if he could withstand.

He dropped the sketchbook on the bed and left Kathryn's room without a second glance. He went into his room, straight to the cabinet beside the unmade bed and he pulled it away from the wall. There was a panel in the wall that he pressed and it popped away; he reached in and pulled out a syringe of mostly clear liquid, tainted only slightly by the stain of blue.

He put the needle in the crook of his arm, right at the crux of the familiar gray vein, and he watched the skin dip as the needle pushed into his skin and then he injected himself with Kathryn's poison.

Fifteen minutes, she'd told him. Fifteen minutes for the medicine to take effect, and then eight hours without the mask.

Bane put the empty syringe back in the wall with the others and then he sat on the bed, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees, and he waited. He was used to the effect of drugs, to the feeling of warmth creeping along in his veins, the dangerous sense of safety and security, and he knew how to tell the good drugs from the bad, and he realized very quickly that this was one of the good ones. The warmth filled his blood but his judgment was not clouded, there was no haze of safety; his thoughts became sharper and quicker, and although the poison was accompanied by a muted sense of euphoria, it wasn't the kind that made careful men stupid. It was a euphoria that made careful men brave, and while Bane normally would have said they were one and the same, he suddenly thought of Kathryn Sherman and her burning eyes and her army.

He rose to his feet, slowly, his blood buzzing.

Maybe there was something to be said for bravery, after all. He felt like _she _was the thing buzzing in his blood, as though there was a tiny, whispering piece of her embedded in him, turning the ice under his skin to something else.

He walked into the bathroom attached to his room and faced himself in the mirror and then he raised steady hands to the mask. He could do the ritual with his eyes closed- screwing off valves and removing clasps until the mask opened over his ears with a chalky 'click' and then he lifted it away.

The time underground had evened the lines of sun on his face, but the places hidden by the mask were still paler than the skin surrounded his eyes. He regarded his own face clinically; the full lips, the thin scar that traced from his ear and down along his jawbone, the wrinkles that fanned from the corners of his eyes-

He hadn't lied when he told Kathryn he didn't know how old he was. He didn't. But he knew he was around forty, and beginning to feel it in his bones.

He almost rolled his eyes at his reflection and then he did, just to see how it looked when his nose and mouth weren't hidden by the mask.

"Old man," he told his reflection, his voice flat and mixed with a faint note that was somehow amused and accusing at the same time.

He went back into Kathryn's room and took one of the books and then he went and sat on the couch, reveling in the feel of the cool air on his skin, and he read.

He read for several hours straight and didn't move except to turn the pages until the afternoon and then, around four fifteen, when Kathryn was due home at any moment, he climbed to his feet, went back to the bathroom and put on his mask. It had been almost eight hours since he'd given himself the medicine and the girl had done her work well; the muted euphoria had not worn off and there was no pain radiating from his ruined spine. He probably could have waited longer before putting the mask back on, but the time was not right for Kathryn to see him without the mask. He still needed her to see him as more than human, something that he'd forgotten last night-

He straightened up and inhaled the filtered air, his eyes roving over the mask that obscured half his face in the mirror. He'd _wanted _her pressed against him, last night, and before then, when the Joker's laugh had surrounded them- it had been reflex to push her back behind him, reflex driven by possession and something else, a primal panic hidden under layers of ice that had, in that moment, cracked.

Bane turned his back on his reflection and his thoughts and returned to her book.

The elevator dinged a few minutes later and the doors slid open with their customary hiss. Kathryn stepped out, red cheeked, with snowflakes melting on her shoulders and hair, and a split lip that was already beginning to swell.

Bane rolled his eyes in exasperation (something he had been doing more and more since she exploded into his life) before he realized it; the girl was a walking disaster zone and may as well have had a flashing beacon attracting danger over her head. Her eyes narrowed at him and she sarcastically rolled her eyes back at him, clutching two massive books to her chest, and he was reminded suddenly of how young she was. Just a child, really, with a child's temperament and a child's control- or lack thereof.

"What?" she snapped, her voice brittle and defensive. Bane set his book and the couch and rose to his feet, moving over to her. She clutched her books tighter to her, like a shield, her violently blue eyes flashing in a warning that he ignored.

"Did you get into a fight?"

"Yes," she said, shortly, and Bane clasped her chin gently, forcing her to look at him. His eyes raked over her face, unmarked aside from her split and swelling lip. The blood stained her mouth and spilled onto her pale chin and Bane was not an artist but he was struck, in that moment, by the bright red that tainted the pale skin. If he was the sort of man who put store on symbols, he would have thought it meant something, something larger than the two of them- but he did not put store by symbols and he was struck only because it was striking and without thinking about it, he ran his thumb over her lip, ghosting over the swelling, and her eyes widened even as he felt the jolt of wanting in his stomach that was becoming more and more familiar.

"What happened?" he asked, very aware that his mechanical voice was lower than normal, and he didn't let go of her chin but he moved his thumb away from her mouth. She pulled away, though, almost gently, taking a step back and his hand fell to her side, her blood on his thumb, and she moved away.

"A gang of guys were mugging this dude," she said, unblinkingly, her blue eyes very guarded, "so I, uh- jumped in."

Bane raised an eyebrow. "And were you successful?"

She gave a half-shrug. "I'm here, so, yeah."

"And the gang? Are they 'here'?"

Her brows furrowed. "If you're asking if I killed them-"

"It would have been the logical thing to do."

"Logical." Her voice was very flat. "You're gonna hold a city captive and tell me about logical?"

"All things have their time, my dear. Gotham's has come."

Her eyes flashed with anger then and he noticed that her arms were tight where she held the books to her chest. "You're only _human_, Bane, no matter how much you'd rather everyone believe otherwise- you don't get to determine when something's time has come."

His eyes raked lazily from her face to the cross glinting on the leather of her jacket. He looked at it until he was sure she'd understood, then flicked his eyes back up to hers.

"No?" he said, calmly. "Then who does?"

She didn't respond.

"Did this newest feat of heroism occur before or after you acquired your latest tools for distraction?"

"Before," she said, her voice stiff, and Bane actually laughed before he caught himself.

"So you stopped a mugging and then went to peruse books?"

She shrugged again, the movement tight and unwelcoming. "It wasn't that big of a deal."

"Of course it wasn't," he said, his voice amused.

Her eyes searched his and then she turned away from him, putting the two books on the counter and her gun on top of them before shrugging out of her jacket. Bane watched the muscles shift in her back under her gray shirt, watched the strands of gold in her ponytail fall way from her neck-

"It's a new world," she said, stiffly, something sad under the hard tone of her voice. "I don't really have the luxury of freaking out every time something horrible happens."

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing and instead picked up the first book. It was heavy and on the cover was the picture of a sparse forest, overlaid by blue and yellow and stars, with the title of the book inscribed in white.

"_The Passage_," Bane drawled. "By Justin Cronin. What's it about?"

She hesitated and his eyes flashed from the book to her face. She wasn't looking at him, but at the book in his hand, something unreadable in her eyes.

"The short answer," she said, slowly, "is that it's about vampires."

Her eyes flashed to him and he felt a chill go down his ruined spine.

"And the long answer," she continued, her eyes fixing him in an inescapable and measuring gaze, "is that it's about humans."

He raised an eyebrow. "It certainly sounds compelling."

"It's one of the best books I've ever read," she said quietly. "And probably the most important."

There was something very careful about her voice, like she was afraid of revealing too much.

"I'm gonna go take a shower," she mumbled then, and she turned away from him.

"You are a very talented artist," he said, his mechanical voice a drawl, and she stiffened before slowly turning her head to look at him.

"You did not," she said, quietly, and he raised an eyebrow. Her gaze was bright and very angry and for a few seconds they just looked at each other and then, with what looked like extreme effort, she turned her back on him and walked away with her back straight.

He didn't move until he heard the water from the shower and then he turned the book over in his hands, his eyes raking it, and then he moved back to the couch and opened it to the first page.

He didn't stop to think that it might be odd, how she'd gotten the books and then left them in the kitchen.

The story was definitely an engrossing one, but Bane didn't get far enough in the half hour she was in the shower to understand why she'd called it 'important'. He stopped reading, at one point, when he thought he heard her sobbing but he couldn't really tell if it was actually her or simply the sound of running water. He remembered what she'd said, about not freaking out whenever something bad had happened- he realized, suddenly, that she had not been talking to him.

Her sobs, masked by the sound of the water, rested deep inside the ice where he carried his soul.

000

Under the stream of water, Katty raised a shaking hand and slowly traced the outline of her swollen bottom lip.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"I Followed Fires" by Matthew and the Atlas

A/N: Wow, I'm really sorry this took so long to upload. I was planning on having it up last week, but i got REALLY sick so I just didn't have the energy to work on it. plus it's a Bane chapter, and those are always more challenging to write. SO IT TOOK FOREVER AND IT'S SHORT I'M SO SORRY but I really like how it turned out. This is a pretty important chapter, and some of what happened in this chapter is going to go on to play a fairly big role in the overall plot.

SPEAKING OF if you haven't read _The Passage _by Justin Cronin, you should. It's one of the most incredible books I've ever read. If you have read it, keep it in mind for the rest of the story.

Thanks for being patient with me! Hopefully it won't take as long to get chapter seventeen uploaded. I can't wait to hear what you think!

Paradisical


	17. Christmas

_**She**_** Rises**** by Paradisical**

* * *

_O come, O come, Emmanuel_  
_And ransom captive Israel_  
_That mourns in lonely exile here_  
_Until the Son of God appear_  
_Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel_  
_Shall come to thee, O Israel._

_O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free_  
_Thine own from Satan's tyranny_  
_From depths of Hell Thy people save_  
_And give them victory o'er the grave_  
_Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel_  
_Shall come to thee, O Israel._

_O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer_  
_Our spirits by Thine advent here_  
_Disperse the gloomy clouds of night_  
_And death's dark shadows put to flight._  
_Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel_  
_Shall come to thee, O Israel._

_O come, Thou Key of David, come,_  
_And open wide our heavenly home;_  
_Make safe the way that leads on high,_  
_And close the path to misery._  
_Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel_  
_Shall come to thee, O Israel._

_O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,_  
_Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,_  
_In ancient times did'st give the Law,_  
_In cloud, and majesty and awe._  
_Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel_  
_Shall come to thee, O Israel._

**Chapter Seventeen: Christmas**_  
_

It was Christmas Eve, and the day so far seemed to embody the unspoken law of the universe that when things were at their worst, anything that could go wrong, would. It wasn't so much events as it was things- Katty's nightmares had been spectacular and she'd been trapped in a lovely bought of sleep paralysis that had taken what seemed like hours to break out of, she'd woken up with a headache that threatened to become a migraine, and her sinuses seemed to be in a full scale rebellion. She felt like death warmed over.

She woke up with a dry mouth and a stuffed up nose and opened her eyes with a groan. She lay in bed for a few minutes, groggy and unwilling to move. Despite where the bed was, and why she was there, it was comfortable and warm and she did not want to leave, but she sat up, head spinning, and looked out the window. The snow was falling in thick white sheets and she stared at it for a few seconds until it sunk in. Her first thought that was that it was uncharacteristically heavy snow for December, and her second was that there was no way in hell she was going out in it and getting sicker. Antibiotics- and any medicine- were a rarity these days and were being traded and sold on street corners and alleyways like cocaine. She was lucky to have her own small pharmacy in the cabinet next to her bed that she knew would get her at least through the next few months (she was incredibly illness prone and had sustained a neck injury two years previously that meant she had some pretty impressive headaches) and she didn't want to risk using more of it than she had to. She decided to skip the hospital for the day and immediately felt a wave of sickening guilt that she suppressed with logic.

_You can't help anyone if you die from being sick, _she told herself firmly, and then she pressed the home button on the iPad that rested on the table next to her. The illuminated lock screen told her it was only seven twenty-three in the morning, so she lay back down and pulled the covers up to her ears.

000

It was a few hours later when she woke up, still feeling like absolute shit. She groaned and rolled over, reaching around inside of her cabinet and she pulled out several bottles. She took an antibiotic and a motrin that she knew would dry out her raging sinuses and make her drowsy and then she rose to her feet, pulling the comforter off of her bed and wrapping it around her shoulders. She very much hoped Bane had left, but no such luck- she emerged from the hallway into the light-filled kitchen and he was sitting at the table, several files spread open in front of him and she saw her face clipped into the corner of one of them and her heart dropped because she knew what that file meant, but he closed it at the sounds of her shuffling feet and looked up at her. His brows furrowed in confusion and slid over her and she would have laughed if she hadn't felt so horrible, because she'd never seen that look of utter bafflement on his face before.

"Have you taken complete leave of your mind?" he asked her finally, his voice questioning and curious under the nonchalant mechanical hiss.

"I'm sick," she said in reply, her voice low and as gravelly as that of a seventy-year-old, chain-smoking male. Bane's eyebrows rose in response. "Do we still have that tea?"

He gave a slow nod and she shuffled over to the mostly empty pantry. There were a few boxes of tea and she grabbed a mint teabag and put it in one of the cheap mugs before pouring water into the coffee pot and then she sat down across from Bane, put her head on her arms, and waited. She could feel his eyes searching the top of her head and she pulled the thick comforter up higher and then she wondered if he'd ever been sick. Probably not; it was too human a thing for a guy like him.

The coffee maker beeped a minute later and she rose slowly to her feet, shuffling over to it like a zombie, and she poured the clear, boiling water into the mug and watched it change to a light brown as it washed over the tea bag.

She went back to the table a few minutes later with the hot mug clutched in her hand and she sat down, taking a few slow sips that slid over her scratchy throat like a balm.

"So," she said, in her illness induced croak. "You found my file."

His eyebrows lifted. "It wasn't exactly secure."

"No," she said, quietly. "No, I guess it wouldn't have been."

"You had an interesting couple of years before we met."

Her eyes flashed because she recognized the patronizing note in his voice and she refused to be patronized, especially by him, especially about that. "Yeah, I guess I did."

"Little _Kat _Sherman. The _victim."_

Her eyes flashed again as the old anger, the old refusal burned through her blood and she tightened her grip on the mug. "I am not a victim. Victims have their choices taken away from them. I just made the wrong ones. I don't-I don't deserve the title of 'victim'."

"No. You fell in love, so you were a victim- but not to him." His voice lifted in pitch and his eyes were burning. "You were a victim to yourself."

"It wasn't love," she said, flatly. "I thought it was, but it wasn't. It was delusion. I needed something to cling to so I clung to the wrong things-"

"Until the truth came out."

She fell quiet.

"You were only one of many. Your teacher, your _married _teacher- he had a taste for younger girls, didn't he? And you were the last one. Tell me- how betrayed did you feel? To find out you weren't special, after all, you weren't the game changer- you were only a naïve young girl with a crush on the wrong man."

Her blood was boiled. It wasn't something she even liked thinking about these days, the man and the kiss and the scarlet letter seared onto her soul, she didn't like remembering how foolish she'd been, how weak- she'd put up a wall between her and it and now Bane wanted to bring it down.

"I was seventeen," she said, finally, her voice quiet and not exactly shaking. "A kid. I'd never had a boyfriend, I'd never even kissed anyone at that point- and he told me he loved me. Told me he couldn't stop thinking about me, that he wanted to run away with me-" the words slid over her memory like slime- "and I was- I was flattered. I wanted to think I was special. I was an idiot and it took me two years to realize that I was just another girl, just another conquest, and I buried it."

His eyes were searching. "How mundane. Your great secret- nothing more than a girl's heartache."

She didn't respond; she didn't need to. She'd spent months thinking that this would be what defined her- the months of numbness and the investigation and the shock every time a new rock was flipped to reveal the slime underneath- but she'd grown and she realized she wasn't defined by his mistakes, after all. She could choose what defined her and why would she chose that, a man who was led by his lusts, a man who'd used her? And so that particular jab of Bane's meant nothing- it almost wanted to make her laugh. Her great secret- she had no great secret, except for the whispers that had haunted her since she was a child, the pit in the darkness, the nightmares and the paralysis- but that wasn't a secret. That was a part of her, a word etched into her DNA that she could not yet speak out loud.

"I'm just Katty," she said, watching him. "I'm just a girl. I have no great secret."

"You have something that gives you strength."

"And you think strength comes from secrets?"

He was silent.

"It's love, Bane," she said, quietly. "Love is where I get my strength, love- if I had a 'great secret', it would be love."

"Love is a weakness that makes fools of anyone it touches." He tapped her file and raised his eyebrows. She shook her head and drank more of the tea.

"No. That- with him- that wasn't love. It was manipulation and a kid's infatuation. Love- real love- it's something completely different. Love _is _strength. Anything else is just a crude imitation."

"And what is love to you, my dear?"

Her eyes searched his face. The mask was cold and it gave nothing away but his eyes were a different story; he was mocking her but the mocking was a front for something else. He was curious. He was listening.

_You can't turn this into a story with a happy ending._

"For me, love is a lot of different things," she said quietly, her hands drumming a pattern on the mug. "It's when me and Holly are driving and the windows are down and she sticks her feet out the window. It's Christmastime-" she choked down the lump in her throat, "-when my dad lights a fire and we turn off all the lights and all six of us just sit in the living room and read. It's when I'm in the ocean, and I'm just resting on the water, and a wave comes up and slides over me like it's caressing me, and it's cold and kind. Love is Pascha, when we're all shouting in different languages and everyone's holding candles and my heart feels like it might explode. Love is this- it's this light, inside you, almost white, and it's not exactly like fire but it's warm at the same time, and it feels like a sunny day with a cool breeze, and it fills every inch of you, from your heart to your fingertips, and it feels like strength. It's the wild insanity that makes people push complete strangers out of harm's way, it's the quiet voice of reason, it's- it's just…. strength."

He was quiet for a few minutes and they watched each other.

"You would make quite a poet," he said, finally, and she gave a tight smile down at her mug of tea. "You paint an incredibly vivid picture with nothing but words."

"You should see what I can paint with my hands," she said, without really thinking about it, and saw him quirk a brow out of her peripheral vision.

"But," she continued, her words slow and careful, "I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about, do you?"

She saw his shoulders tense, just slightly, and a few of the lines around his eyes deepened.

"If you're asking if I've ever felt the emotion you are describing, then the answer is no."

She raised her eyebrows. "Big surprise there."

"There is no room for love in my line of work."

"And what is your line of work? You a professional revolutionary?"

He was quiet for a few seconds. "I have been many things to many people."

She waited, watching him, quiet as he chose his words.

"I have been a mercenary for most of my life."

"And how does someone become a mercenary? Is there a special school you go to?"

Her voice was dripping with sarcasm and she knew he noticed but he didn't respond to it; his brows were furrowed over his dark eyes and he seemed to be thinking intently.

"Someone becomes a mercenary when it is the only path available to them."

"Yeah, but once you realized there was more than that, why didn't you quit?"

The wrinkles around his eyes deepened in a smile. "If only life was as simple as a story, my dear."

"But it is," she said, leaning forward, tucking the blanket tightly around her arms. "That's all it is- just a bunch of stories all woven together. Why- why would you chose the one you did?"

"It chose me," he said simply. "I only decided to not fight against the inevitable."

She snorted. "There's no such thing as 'inevitable'. You could have gotten out, if you wanted to-"

"And when, my dear, did I say that I ever wanted out?" His voice was soft, a ghost of a whisper under the mechanical hiss, sliding over her skin like electrified velvet. She couldn't think of a response and drank a few more sips of her tea.

"Why did you come to Gotham?" she asked after a few moments, and he slowly straighten up, unblinkingly, his eyes not leaving hers. "I mean, there's gotta be a reason, right? Or did you just pull cities out of a hat?"

"My reasons are my own."

"Yeah, but something had to really piss you off. I mean, it's all well and good, being a mercenary, but capturing a city is a whole new ball game- that has to take years of planning, right? And money, and connections, and weapons- this

isn't just about Gotham having issues, is it? This is a vendetta."

He was quiet and his eyes were very dark as they searched hers.

"You have quite an imagination."

"But I'm right, aren't I?" she asked, her voice very soft. "The only question is… whose vendetta is it? Because I don't think it's yours."

"And why is that?" he asked quietly, and she ignored the warning laced into his voice like poison.

"Because you're just the messenger. You might believe what you're been saying but the words aren't yours, or they weren't originally… no, the person who organized this would be in the background, watching… not getting their hands dirty. I'm right, aren't I?"

He said nothing.

"So, who is it? Who's the puppet master behind Gotham's great reckoning?"

"Careful, girl," he said, his voice sliding over the words in a mild sort of way even though his eyes were burning. "You forget yourself."

"No," she said, bravery burning in her veins like fire. "No, I think I'm finally starting to remember."

It was true. Despite the cold and the thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she felt hard and truly brave for the first time since the massacre at the church. Bane was trying to break her but he was failing; this was a fight she could win.

She didn't try to interpret the stormy, unflinching gaze he fixed her in and simply looked back, her fingers drumming out a quick pattern on the side of the warm mug.

"Aren't you going to the hospital?" he asked after a few moments, his voice a low rumble.

"Nope," she said, her voice light. "Not much point in going out in the cold and getting even sicker, especially with medicine being as tight as it is."

"How refreshing." His voice was thick with sarcasm and the lines around his eyes were tight. "You _do _exhibit basic reasoning skills."

"Oh, ha ha."

She rose to her feet, her body aching, and moved slowly over to the couch. She lay down, still cocooned in the blanket, and closed her eyes, starting to shiver, wanting nothing more than a few hours of unconsciousness.

The mask hissed.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to sleep," she mumbled without opening her eyes.

"On the couch?"

"Bed's too far away."

She could almost hear him raising an eyebrow.

"Sweet dreams, my dear."

_Don't ever say that to me again, _she wanted very badly to say, but she was too tired and she thought it at him loudly instead, and soon she had drifted off into an uneasy, feverish sleep.

Bane stayed at the table and watched her for a long time.

000

When she finally woke up (jerked out of sleep with a jolt and a raspy gasp because breathing was getting harder and harder, these days) her lips were chapped and her feet were pressed against something solid and warm and she knew without looking that Bane had situated himself at the end of the couch and was probably reading one of her books.

She opened bleary eyes and glanced down and her sight confirmed what she already knew. He was looking at the pages of _The Passage_ and she felt a surge of triumph and a jolt of surprise because he was already about a third of the way through and it was not a small or particularly easy book. He wasn't looking at her but she had the sense that he was watching her, anyway, and she spent a few seconds of the confusion that came with illness induced sleep studying the lines of his face. She liked to reduce people into planes and lines and colors (it made them easier to deal with) and Bane was all geometric, all hard angles and shades of gray. You didn't paint a face like his; you _slashed _it, with a ruler and a pencil gripped too tightly, and you didn't trace the lines of his face so much as you poured them out onto paper like a poison being expelled.

The mask hissed and he turned a page.

"You were right about this book," he said, in his amiable, mechanical tone, still not looking at her. "It is incredibly intriguing."

"I know," she muttered, running a hand through her dirty hair. "I've read it about six times."

He raised an eyebrow.

"It's a good book," she said, a little defensively, and then she sat up slowly, closing her eyes as her head started to spin, and she tucked the blanket around herself, realizing she'd neglected to put on a bra. Some girls could get away with that; Katty, with 34DDs, was not one of them, and she'd felt Bane's eyes rake over her body enough times in the past few weeks to not want to give him any additional reason to stare.

"Clearly." His voice was mild and she got the eerie feeling that he was smiling at her under the mask and she would have done something stupid if she had the energy for it, because she hated the idea of him smiling at her like that, like she amused him, like they were something beyond prisoner and captor. But she didn't have the energy for it and so she grunted instead, rising to her feet, cocooned in her blanket. She felt his eyes burning into her back as she walked away from him, down the hallway, and it was a physical relief when she turned into her bedroom and the gaze was broken.

She tossed the comforter onto the bed and went into the bathroom, stripping quickly and shivering as the cool air ghosted over her skin. She stood under the hot water of the shower for a long time, letting the water pound on her chest, and the steam work its way through the cold in her system. She thought about her family, and about Christmas, and about everything but Bane. She even thought of her senior year and the hell it had wrought, something she hadn't thought about in a long time. She didn't like to think about it. It stressed her out and the guilt, when it came, was always overwhelming; muted, now, under the weight of the blood on her hands, but the scarlet 'A' was burned into her soul and she knew it wouldn't leave.

_I kissed a married man._

The old nausea washed over her, the disgust with herself, the sickness and the hatred that wrapped around her throat like a vice, and she closed her eyes. She'd scrubbed her lips bloody more than once, wanting to wash away the stain of it, and she suddenly felt like crying, because between the blood on her hands and the 'A' on her chest and Bane's touch ghosting over her skin, she'd never get clean.

She forced herself to take inhale deeply over and over again and forcibly turned her thoughts to other things.

_Christmas,_ she told herself forcefully. _Think about Christmas. Carols and trees and the smell of pine- crackling fires-_

It was an incredibly strange thing, to miss yourself. She felt a pang of longing for the girl she'd been; the old Katty would have been grinning and belting carols to an audience of shampoo bottles, and this new Katty was hard and silent and raw. The two people sat inside of her, conflicting, and she decided that, for the next five minutes, she could be the old Katty.

She opened her mouth and started to sing, and didn't manage to get out more than five words before dissolving into laughter. She was, generally, a very average singer. She wasn't bad but she wasn't particularly memorable either, but now, with her voice raspy and garbled by sickness, every word that she tried to sing was strangled and off key, and she couldn't help laughing. Even that sound was tainted by illness, rasping and almost barking as she struggled to breathe and each gasp, each bark of laughter only sent her further into hilarity and soon she was leaning against the wet tiles for support, gasping for breath. She knew Bane would be able to hear her but she didn't care; laughter was such a rarity in her world now that each second of it was priceless and she felt a beautiful sort of insanity fill her and tears of mirth leaked out of her eyes to join the water from the shower on her face.

She laughed herself out eventually, gasping and giggling and cackling and occasionally being set off by the absurdity of the sounds emerging from her mouth. After leaving behind the warmth and relief the shower brought she wrapped herself in a towel and ran her fingers through her wet hair before quickly twisting it back into a braid. She found herself thinking that she needed to cut it; it was getting long and very frizzy at the ends, and then she rolled her eyes at herself because she was a captive and she was worried about her hair.

"Guess I am a girl, after all," she muttered to herself before letting the towel fall to the ground and pulling on her clothes.

Once she was dry and clothed, she grabbed an oxycodone and the sequel to _The Passage_- a massive book called _The Twelve _that she was ridiculously excited to read- and went back into the living room. She didn't necessarily want to be around Bane but the bedroom was becoming stifling in its familiarity and even though his company was less than ideal in every way, she didn't want to be alone.

Ignoring all of the possible implications of actively seeking out the mercenary's company, she opened her bedroom door and walked down the hallway. Bane's eyes flashed to her when she stepped into the light of the living room but then she blinked and he was looking at the book again, and if the look hadn't sent a lingering jolt down her spine she might have wondered if she'd imagined it. She sat down at the opposite end of the couch, tucked her legs underneath her, opened the book, and started to read.

They sat there in silence for a very long time.

000

Christmas came and Katty woke up feeling much better; the abundance of drugs and water and tea had done their work and she felt mostly human again. She decided very quickly to go back to the hospital; even one day in the apartment had left her feeling twitchy and caged and she and Bane had sat on that couch for hours, just reading. She'd forgotten he was there a couple times, only to be jerked out of her reverie by the occasional mechanical hiss. Strange, how something so normal as reading with the man made her more uncomfortable than when he was teaching her to fight or reading her past back at her with cold eyes.

The apartment was empty when she woke up and she tried to sing again and this time it sounded decent, and her voice echoed around the empty apartment, rising and sliding over the notes of the familiar carol.

"Come, oh come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel-"

She was the kind of person who put a certain store by symbols, and the parallels of the song and Gotham's current situation did not escape her. An abandoned city, waiting for a half forgotten savior- Batman had certainly been no Christ but he had been _theirs._

The winter air and swirling snow wrapped around Katty like a blanket as she left the building but she ignored it, lost in her thoughts. The whole fiasco with Batman and Harvey Dent- it had never sat quite right with her. Something about it had seemed off to her when she was eleven and that unsettling feeling and had grown with her. She didn't necessary join pro-Batman groups or subscribe to the theory that Harvey Dent had actually killed the dead cops, but she'd always had the feeling that there was more to the story.

And that feeling had been all but confirmed the day Bane broke into Wall Street, that day the Batman had come back; she'd watched all the footage she could get her hands on, alternating between grinning like a loon and listening very seriously.

But now he was gone, whoever he was, and Bane said he was dead. Bane had a habit of underestimating his opponents but there'd been something in his eyes that made her believe him, and that created a pit in her stomach that was filled with dread.

Because, if the Batman couldn't save them, who could?

There was Christmas music playing in the hospital. A patient with a broken leg had rigged the speaker system up and connected it to a CD player and quiet carols floated through the halls, and even the people who didn't celebrate the holiday found it calming in its normalcy.

Katty found Langer and did her usual rounds, spending more time than she normally did just talking to people. She had a good bedside manner, and she liked people, and she was good and making them comfortable and happy, even if it was only for a few minutes. It was relaxing for her, too, because although there would always be that hulking shadow behind her, when she helped other people it seemed to fade.

She was leaving the room of a girl with a broken leg when she bumped into a familiar looking blonde woman and for a few seconds the two of them stared at each other, the older woman's jaw dropping as she looked at Katty.

And then it clicked and Katty threw her arms around her mother's neck.

"What are you doing here- is everyone alright, are you guys together-"

"We're fine, we're hiding-"

And then Katty completely broke down. She started sobbing into her mother's shoulder, clutching at her shirt like a child, gasping for air as her body wracked. Her mother held her tightly, running her hands over her hair and her back, saying quietly, "it's okay, it's all going to be okay."

Katty cried herself out after a few minutes and pulled away slightly to wipe the tears off her face, exhaling slowly and trying to calm down. "Sorry, I didn't mean to lose it like that."

"Katie," said Karen Sherman firmly. "You are being held captive by a masked terrorist, if you weren't a little stressed out I would be very worried. Let's go sit down and talk, okay?"

She let herself be led away, gripping her mother's hand tightly and sniffling occasionally. Her mother led them to an empty waiting room and they sat together on one of the couches and Karen put an arm around Katty's shoulders.

"Alright," she said softly. "Tell me what's happened."

Slowly, haltingly, like drawing poison from a wound, the words fell out of Katty's mouth. So much had happened that it felt like years had passed since she'd last seen her mother, but she realized very quickly how little time had actually passed and that only made it feel more surreal. She told her mother about John Blake and about Holly, about being attacked twice and being saved by Bane, him finding her file and teaching her to fight, the Joker and Caroline and the mob, the tracker in her wrist- she showed her mother the lump in the hollow of her wrist and the scars in her shoulders and Karen's jaw tightened.

She fell silent when the story was done and found that she couldn't meet her mother's eyes.

She hadn't told Karen about Bane touching her, or how she'd slept in his arms and how the nightmares had stopped when she had.

"Katie," said her mother quietly. "Look at me."

She did, slowly, and let her mother search her face.

"Is there a way to cut the tracker out?"

Katty shook her head. "No. Even if I got one of the doctors to do it, he'd know. And he'd kill more innocent people."

"What is this cop of yours planning?"

"First off, he's not _my _cop, and secondly, I don't know. He doesn't want to tell me in case something happens and I'm compromised, and it makes sense. But I think it's gonna happen soon. Wherever you guys are hiding- no, don't tell me- make sure it's safe, okay? Nice hair, by the way."

Karen smiled. "We've all changed the way we look a little. Nathaniel's a red head now-" Katty gave a bark of laughter at that; her brother loved his golden curls, "-and your dad and I have lost about forty pounds between us."

"Dang. No wonder it took me a few minutes to recognize you."

"You look different, too."

Katty's smile was easy and understanding. "I look horrible."

"No, you don't! You just look… ancient." Karen's voice was quiet. "You look like something outside of time."

Katty inhaled sharply because her mother's words hit just a little too close to home. "I feel like it, too. Speaking of things outside of time, I got the sequel to _The Passage. _Oh my gosh, mom, it's incredible, I was reading all day yesterday. Tell dad I'll let him borrow it when all this is over."

Karen laughed at that, really laughed, and tightened her grip around her daughter's shoulders. "I will definitely tell him. How did you get it?"

"Bane's nice to me every now and then, probably so I don't go all kamikaze on him, and he let me go get some books a few days ago, so I picked up that one and _The Passage. _He got a me a few books when he took me, but I read them all."

"He got you books? Why?"

"Probably to shut me up."

"Well," said Karen, raising her brows. "I can't blame him for that."

"Thanks, mom. Good to know who's side you're on."

"You should seriously consider killing him in his sleep, though."

Katty opened her mouth to disagree, thought for a second, and then closed her mouth, her brow furrowing. "You know. If I can get Holly out… that's not a bad idea."

"Do you think you could really kill him? In cold blood?"

"You haven't met him," said Katty, quietly, with a hardness she didn't entirely feel. "Believe me, there would be nothing cold about killing him."

"You didn't answer my question, Katie."

Katty could not meet her mother's eyes.

000

The snow was falling hard when she left the apartment and her gun was cocked in the front of her pants, her hands shoved deep in her pockets and her collar turned up against the snow. She normally pulled her hair back but she took it out of its ponytail now, letting it curtain her face as another layer of protection against the cold.

She shoved the latest list of information into the hollow brick (entrances and exits and guards and the normal amount of people in the lobby and Bane's schedule and the times she was at the hospital) and waited for a few minutes, but saw no sign of the dark haired cop. She left the alley a few minutes later, thoughts swirling around with the snow.

Killing Bane. She couldn't lie, not even to herself, and say the thought hadn't crossed her mind and more; she'd meant to kill him, hadn't she? She'd even fantasized about it, about sliding a knife between his rips and feeling his blood slide over her fingers, watching the icy light go out of his gray eyes, but lately- lately her dreams had been very different and had involved _his_ hands on _her_ body, big and insistent and warm-

_No._

But _could_ she kill him? She knew now that she could kill anyone if it came down to it, and he was just another person. Just a human, and humans she could fight, and she certainly wanted him out of her city, but did she want to be the one to kill him?

Yes. If it came to that, yes- she had an uneasy feeling, in her gut, that it was going to come down between her and him and that only one of them would walk away. But she didn't want to kill anyone, not ever again, not even him.

She snorted at herself and brushed her hair behind her ears.

"You're going soft," she muttered. "He's not your friend. He's the bad guy."

But there was another truth building between them, one that she felt but refused to name- a truth beyond the blood and the war, a truth that was no less deadly and dangerous but it was different and strange, and she knew that he was trying to change the rules of the game and she had to outlast him.

The war wasn't just between Gotham and the Liberation, she knew that. It was between her and Bane, too, and the catastrophic fallout, when it came, would sweep the city away with it.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Come O Come Emmanuel" is a traditional English Christmas Carol.

A/N: GUYS I AM SO SORRY LIFE GOT AWAY FROM ME I KNOW IT'S BEEN FOREVER :((((((((

I hope you like this chapter! It was a lot of fun to write and parts of it were also really difficult to write.

Um, preemptive stuff: be careful before you comment on 'Katty's' past because, as i mentioned in the first chapter, she is a self insert and so her past is my past. I don't mean for that to sound rude, but I just wanna nip some of that stuff in the bud, YA KNOW. BUT ANYWAY, I can't wait to hear what you think! I know the past two chapter have both been really introspective, and there'll be more action in the next one. I'm going out of town next weekend, so I'm HOPING to get the chapter up before then, but I make no promises. Again, i am super sorry for the extra long wait.

Love you guys!

Paradisical


	18. Hope and Hatred

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_I listened with all of my might,_  
_but was scared by the look in his eyes._  
_Like he'd already lost the fight,_  
_and there was no hope ever in sight. _

_No hope in the air, _  
_no hope in the water,_  
_not even for me, _  
_your last serving daughter._

_Why fear death, be scared of living,_  
_our hearts are small and ever thinning._  
_There is no hope ever of winning,_  
_oh, why fear death, be scared of living._

_I have seen men provoked,_  
_and I have seen lives revoked,_  
_and I looked at my life and choked._  
_From there no more ever I spoke._

_I can't give up that quick._  
_My life is a candle and a wick._  
_You can put it out but you can't break it down,_  
_in the end we are waiting to be lit._

_There's hope in the air, _  
_there's hope in the water,_  
_but sadly not me,_  
_your last serving daughter._

**Chapter Eighteen: Hope and Hatred**

It wasn't necessarily that he wanted to die. In fact, he absolutely wanted to continue surviving; he had spent so long clinging to life with every fiber of him that now, when he was supposed to just let go, he had to fight every instinct that he possessed. He was the consummate survivor and now he had to simply wait for death to find him and it did not bring the peace to him that it brought Talia. But he was bound to her, as simply and as completely as the Earth was bound to the sky, and if she was going to walk headfirst into the darkness, then of course he would follow. It seemed almost fated that their lives should end in this one final blaze of fire and destruction; it seemed fated that their deaths would bring with them the deaths of millions. He didn't really believe in fate, but they'd always been the harbingers of blood and chaos and it had always suited them.

But there was something out of place underneath the ice of Bane's consciousness, wriggling and unsettling and causing him, for the first time in his life, to doubt. The seeds of the doubt had been planted long before Kathryn Sherman but it was only since he'd met her that the doubt began to sprout roots and Bane had realized what it was called. He ignored it.

But he couldn't ignore her. Biting and rash, where Talia was calculating and cold, and yet she'd wormed under his skin and now she slept there like a sleeping dragon from old legends. She brought doubt and fire into his world which had no place for either and she was a challenge, a strange puzzle that he could not solve. He'd taken her file in hopes to finding the key but it brought only more questions; her strength did not come from her past. She had suffered no great tragedy, bore no great weight on her shoulders- and yet she was _old._

He would lead her to a cliff, expecting her to jump, and instead she'd fly. She never did what he expected and he knew that this was one of the reasons she was so intriguing to him. She was not particularly special, on paper or at first glance, but she was human in a way he'd never experienced before.

And she made want the things he had missed. Bane had experienced many things in his life, but the things she represented were utterly alien to him and thus fascinating in a very scientific sort of way. She felt everything so _strongly. _Every emotion for her was a revelation and every action was a direct effect of that revelation and Bane, who lived in a world of logic and calculation and 'the next step of the plan', found himself captivated by the sheer magnitude of the worlds inside her head.

There was never any question of it, not really. He would follow Talia into the dark because there was no world for him without her. But he wanted to solve the mystery of the girl before he did.

000

The atmosphere in Gotham had become volatile. It was as though the air itself had been turned into a dormant sort of explosive and all that it would take was a spark to ignite the very air they breathed into a fire that would consume it all. That was the thing about fire, the thing Bane knew and the thing Katty was learning- fire didn't discriminate. When a fire rose, it burned everything in its path and the air had turned into an ignition, just waiting for that spark.

The catalyst was the Joker. Gotham had been- not quite content, but scared to shake the delicate equilibrium of the new city, but when the Joker had struck, on the side of the angels for the first time in a very long time though it didn't particularly matter, Gotham awoke like a giant, slumbering beast and realized that it carried the fire in its very blood.

Kathryn Sherman felt the change in the air, felt it slide over her skin like electricity, saw it on the streets in the set of people's shoulders and the lines around their eyes. She saw it in the hospital, more and more of the mercenaries being brought in because they were the ones being attacked, now. Bane didn't need to feel it. Bane saw it in the increased number of attacks, the small riots in the street that he knew were leading to something larger. After Christmas, he started working Katty harder when they trained. She was a Gothamite, through and through, but he'd heard the whispers beginning to spread around the city, stories of a girl with a masked monster at her back. The girl in the stories didn't need a name for Bane to know it was his captive, and to know that he'd been the one to place that deadly title on her head. If it came down to it, he did not know that the city would take her back, and so he taught her to fight. She was learning, not necessarily quickly but steadily, learning in the same way she did everything else, with a quiet intensity and a strange sort of honesty.

He knew it wouldn't be enough.

If he was a little more human, he might have cared.

Later, he'd look back at the thirtieth of December as the day that everything changed. Bane'd been alive long enough to recognize that most of life's great changes were not announced with fanfare and explosions, but that, instead, they were quiet and subtle. They were the tiny things that grew and expanded over the weeks and months and years and it would only be so much later that someone could see when it had all began to change. Bane was good at spotting change, good at recognizing the metallic taste it left in his mouth, but not even he recognized what would come from such small things, from slow kisses and quick words spoken in an old anger.

He was out of the apartment before dawn had fully lifted, patrolling the streets with a small detail of mercenaries, knowing that the presence of a watchful eye was sometimes enough to keep an unruly population in line. The streets of the city were quiet and dark and empty; most of the streetlights had been out of use for several weeks now, and the places on the grid that still had power were overpopulated with people who were simply trying to stay warm. Bane felt many pairs of eyes, peering out at him from behind cracked windows and broken doors, and he felt no kind of sympathy or compassion for them. What was happening was simply something that had to happen; he felt no personal anger against these people, but they would die whether he felt pity for them or not. It did not seem productive to waste his energy on them.

_And yet you've taught the girl to fight_, said something quietly, and he ignored it. The girl was something that it was simply easier to not think on, to not deal with what emerged when the dust began to settle- some things were best left forgotten.

On December Thirtieth, there were no riots and the streets were quiet. The snow was beginning to fall in thicker sheets of white and there were probably three inches crunching softly beneath his boots. The familiar hiss of the mask sounded as Bane's eyes roved over the deserted streets, searching for any movement that was too quick, any shoulders tightened in that familiar posture of preparation-

But there was nothing. Gotham was quiet but it certainly wasn't peaceful; there was an electric current, running under and through the city, skipping and sticking over Bane's skin. The Joker was surely holed up somewhere, waiting for the perfect time to strike again- he wasn't the sort to plan out his attacks but there was a certain method to them, nonetheless. Bane wondered vaguely how much of that came from the clown's companion.

After a few hours of Gotham's frigid, abandoned streets and the sound of snow, Bane split up the mercenaries. Some were to keep patrolling the streets while others he sent to hospitals and to the courts, and he himself turned back in the direction of the apartment. It was empty, with Kathryn at the hospital, and there were things he needed to address. The Joker needed to be dealt with, needed to be flushed out from whatever hole he was hiding in, and he needed to be dealt with soon, so Bane anticipated an afternoon filled with blueprints of the sewers and the city.

What actually happened, though, was very different.

The elevator doors slid open and the familiar scent of gardenias filtered through his mask and he inhaled deeply without thinking about it- the smell was light and clean and fresh and he was used to it, now, after almost two months with Kathryn, but it was still alien in most ways.

And then his eyes fell on the slim figure of Talia, sitting on the smooth leather couch, her tiny hands twisting in her lap, her brow furrowed in a familiar expression.

"Talia," he said, the low rumble tainted by a surprise that most people wouldn't have been able to hear, but her head jerked up and he saw in her green eyes that she did.

"Bane," she said, quietly, her voice little more than a breath, and she rose to her feet, letting her hands fall to her sides and Bane's eyes swept over her body.

"Why are you here?" he asked her, his voice lower than he meant it to be. "Are you in danger?"

She shook her head, giving a quick, fluttering kind of laugh. "No. No, I am perfectly safe, holed up in Wayne's building with the people we are to destroy."

Bane remained quiet and her eyes flickered over his face.

"I wanted to see you," she said simply, her voice quiet. "I want to see your face, my friend, it is almost January. We only have two months left."

"We could have more."

Bane's voice hung between them, suspended and swirling like dust motes in a beam of light, and he saw a kind of shock in Talia's eyes that hadn't been there since she was a child.

"Bane," she said softly, kindly, with a sort of pity.

"There are still ways out of the city," he said, his mechanical voice soft and sliding over the words as he moved closer to her. "We do not need to be in the city to detonate the bomb, you know this, Talia. We can leave and watch this city burn, and then we can-"

She reached up to touch his face, her fingertips soft and cool, and he fell silent.

"It must end this way," she said, her eyes searching his. "I have always known it, and you have too. We are damned, Bane. You have accepted this for the last twenty years. Why do you now wish to crawl out of the dark?"

_I have spent forty years in the dark for you_, he thought but didn't say. Instead he lifted an eyebrow.

"It is my instinct to survive, Talia."

"I know," she said quietly, her fingertips still ghosting over his skin. "But the time has come to rest."

Bane said nothing.

"Can you-" Talia drew in a deep breath. "Is there a way for you to take the mask off?"

His lips twitched. "As fate would have it," he said, his voice a low rumble. "There is. Wait here."

He left her and found that his heart was pounding as he moved back to his room and pulled the box out of that hole in the wall. The rest was just fate, really, the syringe and the clear, pale blue liquid, the buzzing in his veins and his own steady hands reaching up to remove the mask from his face.

And then she was there, Talia, standing in the doorway while he sat on the bed, reaching up to take the mask off, and she moved over to him wordlessly, sinking down next to him, her tiny hands moving deftly over the clasps and wires of the mask. It fell away and he moved it, without really thinking about it, staring at Talia as her eyes roamed over his face, her lips parting.

She reached up slowly to touch his face and her fingers did not ghost over his skin this time; they were firm and cool and grounding as she drank in the face that had been hidden for twenty years. His skin vibrated at her touch, he ached with want but it wasn't fire, it was fierce but it did not burn and Bane suddenly felt as though something was missing.

But it didn't matter because her hands were cupping his face and then she was very close, her breath ghosting over his mouth, and then her lips pressed against his.

There'd been plenty of women, over the years, no shortage of them wanting a taste of power, but Bane'd had all those women with the mask on, and the act was just physical, lust and primal want. There'd never been any emotion in it, and there'd never been a woman with his mask off. So this, now, Talia's lips on his, soft and warm and insistent, was something utterly new and utterly alien and he grabbed her shoulders and crushed her to him.

The rest of it was just inevitable, really.

000

There was something in the air and it was hope. It was a fierce kind of hope, the kind of hope that went hand in hand with hatred, but it was so much better than the fear and resignation that had slaked Gotham since Bane's attack that Katty wanted to sing.

The ratio of mercenaries and civilians in the hospital had begun to tip decidedly in favor of the mercenaries- people were fighting back. The Joker, God bless him (and those were words that Katty had never thought would ever cross her mind), had inspired an incredible sort of bravery in the people of Gotham and Katty knew that her Caroline'd had something to do with it. Caroline was a Psych major and she was good at it, she was a manipulator and she was smart, cunning in a way that people normally weren't but she was also kind and self sacrificing and clever, and if anyone could match wits with the Joker and come out on top, it was that girl. Katty was worried about her friend (worried about all of them, about Holly in her cage and Brooklynne, wherever the hell she was) but she had complete faith in her, too, and a burning pride.

The tide was turning against Bane and Katty would be riding the crest of the wave.

It was another slow day. No major injuries, just changing IVs and patching up minor wounds. Katty did get to help deliver her first baby around noon and that was quite an experience, a beautiful one in the midst of so much destruction, but it didn't come with the stress and the chaos that healing broken people did. Katty almost liked it more when things were chaotic because she liked keeping busy, liked darting about from room to room like a madwoman- it made her exhausted and she didn't dream when she was exhausted and her dreams were nothing good, these days, always featuring Bane in ways that she didn't like at all. She was seriously considering pinning John Blake against the alley and kissing him just to get the frustration out of her system, but the logical part of her overruled the base instinct. It would lead nowhere good, even with a man like John Blake, who seemed to be nothing _but_ good. And it wasn't really _him_ she wanted, anyway; he was just her only option. Her suspicions of Langer being gay had been confirmed two days after Christmas when the doctor's extremely handsome husband had showed up at the hospital with news and a new shipment of antibiotics. Katty had reached in to take a bottle and Langer had stopped her, a tight and gentle hand on her wrist and she frowned at him. They took what they needed, she and Langer and the other nurses and doctors in the hospital- they were good to no one if they were dead.

"No," said Langer, firmly. "Those go to Bane's people."

Katty's brow had furrowed.

"He has them on a pretty strict schedule of antibiotics to make sure they don't get sick, and we have to give them to him a week from now. There's an inventory and if any are missing… well, on our heads it be."

He and his husband had exchanged a dark look and then he let go of Katty's wrist and she'd given him a slow nod.

"Alright."

So Langer wasn't an option and he wasn't really her type anyway. That left Barsad and that idea was so ridiculous she'd actually laughed out loud when she'd realized one day in the shower exactly how long it'd been since she'd kissed anyone.

It was just easier to work herself into exhaustion and hope that her sleep would be dreamless.

Afternoon came and brought a thick snow with it, falling in heavy blankets over the ghost town Gotham had become. Katty stared out one of the windows, watching the snow fall, thinking. It was getting easier to cope, easier to focus and function despite the blood she was coated in, and although she wasn't content, she was… she was. She just _was._ There wasn't really a word for her mental state, at least none in English or the little bit of Arabic that she knew, there was no word for being emptied out, for being hollow and having a tiny fire at the center of where everything important used to be. The rules of who Kathryn Ivey Sherman was were being rewritten and in a strange sort of way, she was curious to find out just who she was, now. She'd killed and delivered a baby; she'd made an extremely potent anesthetic that Langer informed her could change pain medicine forever (though she couldn't take credit for that, it had all been Ezra) and she'd led a rebellion.

She had been made into something new, and although that'd been Bane's goal all along, Katty couldn't help the smirk that twisted her crooked lips as she stared out at the snow. Bane'd made one mistake, one big mistake, in transforming her; the old Katty had known her limits, known them well and etched them into every cell of her body, but this new Katty had no idea what her limits were or what she was capable of.

Which meant she was capable of anything.

000

He would have thought it would feel surreal, but it didn't. The sheets against his skin, the cooling sweat on his limbs, the taste of her on his lips and her skin in the gray winter light- it was all crystal clear and viscerally real, and he knew that every second would be etched into his skin until the day he died. Talia's hair spilled down her bare back and the sheets wrapped around her hips, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Bane couldn't see her face but he didn't need to to know that she was lost in thought. He lifted a hand and traced his fingers down her spine and saw goose bumps lift on her smooth skin and then she sighed, turning her head to look at him. No words swirled between them- there were no words left. There was nothing to say that hadn't been touched between them with quick hands and insistent lips.

But Talia spoke anyway, her voice even and low and careful.

"You said earlier that there are still ways out of the city." Her dark green eyes searched his. "Is that true?"

"Yes," he rumbled, the sound organic now instead of mechanical. For a few seconds, Talia was quiet.

"You would follow me anywhere, wouldn't you," she said, and there was no cruelty in her voice. It wasn't even a question, not really, because she knew that the answer would always be yes.

"You know I will."

"I cannot leave," she murmured. "Bane, it was always to end here, in this city, fighting this fight- what is left for us beyond Gotham?"

"I don't know," said Bane, honesty coloring the hard layers of his deep voice. "Maybe nothing." There was a pause. "Maybe everything."

She gave a short, quiet laugh. "There is no place for you and I in that world anymore, my friend. There never was."

_There's not a place for anyone anywhere, _said a voice in his head that sounded very much like Kathryn. _That's the point of living. You gotta carve out your own place._

He sat up slowly, leaning close to her, inhaling in the smell of her- earthy and rich and exotic.

"Perhaps," he said, his voice low and rumbling, "that's the point."

"So, what," she asked, and there was something hard in her accented voice now, "you want us to move to France, and get a little cottage, out in the country?" She laughed. "It sounds miserable, Bane. No, we were mean for something more."

"Yes," he said evenly, "I know. Blood and destruction and war."

Her eyes met his. "It's all we've known," she said quietly, and he touched her chin gently, tilting her face up to his.

"But it doesn't mean it's all that's there."

"Have you gone soft on me, old friend?" There was something biting behind the fondness in her voice.

"No," he said simply, and it wasn't a lie. "But I have become curious."

"Of?"

"We have lived a very… narrow life, Talia. We've explored only one path of life, never realizing that there were thousands more, simply waiting to be traveled. We picked our path and we've stayed on it stubbornly, never straying, never exploring. But there is more. There is so much more."

"And who has broadened your mind?" she asked, softly. Blue eyes flashed in Bane's mind and he ignored them.

"I broaden my own mind," he said and the warning was in his voice that time. "I will follow you, Talia, you have always known this. But… but I would like to follow you out of Gotham, away from the fire and the ashes."

"There is no 'away'," she snapped, suddenly, her eyes flashing with a familiar steel. "There has never been 'away', this has always been my destiny. The pit, the League of Shadows, my father- all of it has led here, don't you see?"

And that was the truth that had been sleeping inside him; he didn't. He didn't see how all of it led to a ruined city and an old vendetta, didn't see how ridding the world of one broken city would change anything. But it'd never mattered that he didn't see it, what mattered was that Talia did. Until now, until he realized that there were other paths, other alleys, other lives to explore and conquer- now Gotham seemed like such a little thing.

But he said none of this and instead remained silent. Talia stared at him, hard, and then she tossed the sheets away from her and slid off the bed, rising to her feet.

"This was a mistake," she said, her voice very hard, and Bane felt something in his chest clench.

"Talia-"

"No," she snapped, pulling her clothes on, her hair swinging about her face. "I have wanted for two decades to see your face, my friend, but you- you are no longer with me."

"You know that isn't true," he said, his own voice hard as he rose to his feet. "How many times have I told you I will follow you in the last hour alone?"

"I need more than your actions and your words and your body, Bane," said Talia, fully clothed now and her eyes bright as she stared at him. "I need your heart and your soul, and it is clear they no longer belong to you."

He stared at her, uncomprehending. "No," he said, slowly, his brows furrowing. "No, they- they have always been yours."

The look she gave him was almost pitying. "Once, maybe." Her voice was sad. "But no longer. No matter- the things we have set in motion cannot be undone. I will not leave Gotham. It is time to see my father's work complete."

She moved to the doorway and he followed her, like he always followed her, down the hallway and to the elevator.

"Talia-" he lifted a hand to trace the length of her arm but she stopped him with those steely green eyes.

"Don't," she said. "Please don't touch me, Bane, it will…." She drew in a deep breath. "I have to remain focused. There are only two months left, after all."

He let his hand fall to his side, feeling a dull ache begin to spread throughout his body, resonating from his chest. He was no stranger to pain- he was defined by it- but this sensation was utterly new to him. _How interesting a feeling_, he noted dryly, _is heartbreak_.

She stepped in the elevator and turned around to face him, her face drawn and her eyes bright.

"And Bane," she said, calmly, as she pressed the button that would take her to the ground floor, "those ways out of the city?"

He gave a slow nod. When she spoke again, her voice was flat.

"Destroy them."

The doors slid closed and Bane was left standing in the middle of the living room, pain radiating from his heart and from his ruined spine.

He closed his eyes a few moments later, still able to taste her on his lips, and clenched his hands into hard fists at his side. The pain was changing, giving way to something different, something icy and familiar.

Anger had always been so much easier to deal with. All he needed was a little bit of blood, and Gotham was full of people just waiting to die.

000

The winter air was cold and cruel and the wind was fierce, whipping around the snow, howling and screeching and frigid. Katty had turned the collar of her coat up and tucked her arms against herself, ducking her head against the assault of winter. The snow was unusually thick for December, so thick that she couldn't see more than about ten feet in front of her at a time, and so she didn't see the dark, lean figure of John Blake until she almost ran into him.

"Katty," he said, and she jumped back, startled, her eyes sweeping the street out of habit, though it was made useless by the snow and there were no sane people out in the blizzard, anyway.

"In here," John said and she followed him into the alley. They were sheltered from the onslaught of snow and wind by the buildings on either side of them and Katty heaved a sigh of relief, not at all looking forward to the rest of the twenty-minute walk back to the apartment. John Blake's brown eyes were shining bright in his narrow face, his cheeks reddened by the cold. He was actually smiling.

"Haven't seen you in a while," he said, his tone easy, and she smiled back at him, the expression feeling strange but genuine.

"Been busy," she replied, and for a few minutes they just looked at each other. They normally communicated like this, shortened sentences and quick replies, because the time they took to meet wasn't theirs', and the pauses between words and sentences, when they took them, held a certain kind of meaning. But this silence was different; it was the kind of silence that grew between people who had been thinking about each other. Katty hoped, suddenly, that he hadn't developed a crush on her. She wasn't a good person to have romantic feelings for, even before Bane and the torment that came with him, because she was extremely put off by the idea of a commitment and even more put off by the idea of giving another person that much power over her. She didn't particularly think he had a crush on her (she could read the signs) but she was naturally paranoid and that had only increased over the past two months, so she couldn't help worrying, either.

"It's gonna be soon," he said, suddenly, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his thick coat. "Don't have a date yet, but we do have a plan."

Katty nodded. "Good. Guessing you can't tell me?"

His eyes glinted and he gave a short laugh. "Nah. The less you know, and all that."

She gave another nod; she'd expected his answer and she knew that there was more to come.

"You find out what room your friend's in?"

Katty shook her head. "No. I think she's on the twenty-seventh floor, but I haven't been able to check."

"Katty, listen. I can't guarantee your friend's safety. Or yours. But-"

"No buts," said Katty, firmly. "You do what you have to do and if me and Holly are caught in the crossfire, well, that's unfortunate but it's just part of it."

John's brow furrowed. "You're pretty quick to hand over your friend's life. Yours I can understand, but are you that comfortable speaking for her?"

"Yes," said Katty, flatly. "We've been friends for over seven years and we've been through… well, we've been our share of bad shit together and I know her better than anyone. If the places were swapped, she'd say the same. It's about more than us."

The laugh he gave then was more of an exhale, sharp and biting a quick. "You got that right. It's more than any of us. Listen, is there… anything else you can tell me? The intel you've gotten me so far has been great, we actually have a shot thanks to you, but we need- we need a way to get some of the mercs out of the way."

"I think they're doing that for you," said Katty wryly. "Loads of them have been in the hospital lately."

"Maybe, but that still leaves a couple hundred of them on the street. We're outmatched…. by _way_ more than ten to one. Is there anything you can think of? Any sort of… of hive weakness, or group trigger, anything like that?"

Katty bit her lip, thinking, running through images and memories in her mind, trying desperately to make a connection that could help him, but it was blank.

"I can't think of anything," she said slowly. "But… meet me here in two days, same time, alright? I'll do some digging, I'll see what I can find. There has to be something."

John nodded, his eyes very bright. "Thanks, Katty."

They just looked at each other. If life was a romance movie, it was the part where they would have leaned in slowly, desperate for each other despite the insurmountable odds against them- but Katty felt glad, not for the first time, that life was not a romance movie because she liked John Blake but she didn't want to give her heart to him and she certainly didn't want to be responsible for the care of his, but she did like his company and his mind, and was grateful to have even that. She was grateful for all human contact that didn't come from Bane, but she liked John Blake and felt at ease around him.

"I need to go," she said, finally, and he nodded. "Two days, right?"

"Right," he said, still nodding. "And, Katty… take care of yourself."

A smile twisted across her face. "I always do."

The weather didn't let up while she walked as quickly as she could through Gotham's empty streets back to the apartment. The warmth from the building was like the light of heaven shining down on her and she exhaled a great sigh of relief, walking past the assorted mercenaries in their greys and greens to the elevator. She saw Dev and gave the older woman a nod that she returned.

The elevator doors slid closed and she let herself slouch against the gleaming side of it as it began to move smoothly upwards. Even in a high-end building like this one, it took a bit of time to get up to the thirtieth floor, and she was tired to her bones.

The apartment was empty. Bane's bed was messy when she walked past his room, and she frowned- it was normally neatly made and looked hardly slept in, but it didn't really matter. She went into her own room and shut the door before slipping off her boots and jacket and pulled on one of the thick flannel sweatshirts she'd nicked from an abandoned department store a few days earlier. She pulled on socks too and grabbed a book before going back to the living room and starting a new pot of coffee.

She was settling onto the couch with her book as the pot bubbled, staring out at the falling snow, and thought that, if it weren't for where she was and why she was there and who she was waiting for, it would be almost cozy.

Bane was gone for several hours and Katty didn't particularly care; it was nice to not have a hulking masked presence at her back, nice to relax as much as she could. She made dinner and ate it slowly, still reading, and then she cleaned up the kitchen, changed out of jeans into sweatpants, and watched a movie on the iPad. The lights flickered a couple of times; most of Gotham was without power now, and the only reason they still had any was because Bane'd press ganged some engineers into rerouting power to the building, but even that wouldn't last for much longer. Katty tried not to worry about it, hoping very much that Gotham would be free of Bane and the terrorists before much longer.

A few hours later, she was in a deep, drug induced sleep when she woke up very suddenly and lay blinking up at the ceiling, bleary and confused. She heard the faint mechanical hissing of the mask and Bane's footsteps and she frowned to herself- she knew his footsteps, they were steady and solid, and although she knew it was him in the living room, he sounded… clumsy. Off balanced, not like himself at all.

She lay still for a few more minutes and then gave a furious roll of her eyes before throwing the covers off herself violently.

"I am not putting pants of for you," she muttered to the masked man who had no way of hearing her, but she did pull on the flannel sweater to mask her bra-lessness. The sleep shirt she wore was more of a dress, anyway, reaching down to the middle of her thighs. She ran a hand through her already messy hair and moved out of her dark bedroom. Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness from sleep and so it was easy to see the hulking figure of Bane, shrugging out of his coat with strange, jerky movements that she recognized as being fueled by pain. She had a very sudden flash back to her first night with him, when she'd fixed his mask and considered trying to overpower him- funny, how things changed. Now she might actually have a chance.

He didn't look at her and she moved closer to him through the dark, her brow furrowing. His shirt looked slick in several places and she saw the stain of blood on his skin and especially his hands, and Katty was the sort of person who put a certain store on symbols and she felt something in her stomach go cold.

"You alright?" she asked slowly, and he still didn't look at her. The mask hissed, a slow, grating sound that she still didn't like.

"I'm fine." His mechanical voice was low and masked with that amiability he had when he was at his most dangerous.

"So that's not your blood, then?" Her voice was quiet and he did look at her then, turning his head just slightly, his eyes flashing in the dark.

"No."

"Whose?"

"Does it matter?" he asked, his voice hard and careless and one of his brows tensed upwards.

"Of course it does," said Katty, and her voice was hard too. He just looked at her and she was unnerved by his gaze; she'd gotten better at reading him over the past two months and this look was something different. He normally looked at her with a sort of scientific curiosity but this… this was cold and calculating and empty. It set her on edge and made her tense because he looked like a wild animal, like a big, predatory thing with flat, reptilian eyes.

"Someone you knew, undoubtedly," he said, and the look in his eyes carried to his voice and there was nothing human about it. "Someone who was in my way."

She was stunned; he was a monster, of course he was, but normally he was careful and this was different. Something had happened and something inside of him had given way- whatever ties to humanity he'd carried had grown weaker.

"What happened?" Katty asked, forcing her voice to be cold. "You not filled your weekly quota of awful shit, or did someone just look at you wrong?"

"You forget who you are speaking to, girl-"

"Bane No-Last-Name, terrorist extraordinaire, killer of innocents, puppet of someone who you're either terrified of or in love with-"

And before she could blink he had grabbed her face with one big hand, his thumb and forefinger pressing into her cheeks painfully hard and her voice was cut off as he moved closer to her, his eyes boring down into hers.

"Do you think this is a game?" he asked, his mechanical voice even and his eyes freezing.

"That's exactly what I think-" her voice was warped by his hand but her brain-to-mouth filter had always been a little defunct. He tightened his grasp on her face and she felt his blood-slicked fingers pressing tightly into the skin of her cheeks, felt someone else's blood begin to trickle down her jaw and neck.

"You have been operating under vastly misinformed pretences, girl. I have allowed your insolence up until now, but no more. Do not again make the mistake of thinking we are equals." His eyes were ice. "If you speak to me like that again, Holly Wakefield's left hand will be removed from her body."

His eyes bored into hers for a few seconds. "Do we understand each other?" he asked, and his tone was almost friendly.

The anger that filled Katty now was something that she had never quite experienced before. It was one thing for him to threaten strangers, horrible as it was, but it was something very different for him to threaten Holy Wakefield. Katty thought of her friend and her blood turned to fire and it all came rushing back, how much she _hated _him, the thousand ways she'd like to kill him, and nothing else mattered, it didn't matter that, yes, she wanted him, because _he threatened Holly._

_I'm going to be the one to kill you_, she thought, hoping very much he could read her mind as she met his icy gaze.

"Yes," she growled, and a few moments later he released her.

"Good," he said, his mechanical voice light. "There is blood on your face, now, as well as your hands, my dear."

And then he turned his back to her and left her standing in the darkness, so angry she was shaking, with a bloody handprint across her face.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Hope In The Air" by Laura Marling

A/N: IT'S HERE MY LOVELIES IT IS HERE! AND IT'S LONG! Although there ended being little Bane/Katty intereaction. :( BUT NONETHELESS this is a very important chapter and ooooh my gosh I am so freaking excited about what's going to be happening over the next few chapters. I hope you guys like it!

Housekeeping: As much as i would LOVE to update this story once a week, it's not feasible. I am way busier than I thought I would be and I just have very little time to myself, and so even less to work on the story. Hopefully I'll have a job within the next few weeks, and I'll be even busier if I do. I'm trying to get on a schedule of writing at least twenty minutes a night, so hopefully that'll speed the process up a bit. But longer wait=longer chapter so I guess it's sort of a fair trade. I'd like to get to the point where I'm updating once a week, but we'll just have to see.

I MISSED YOU GUYS I MISS BEING ABLE TO WRITE BUT I'M SERIOUSLY SO EXCITED TO JUST HEAR FROM ALL OF YOU THAT I'M BEAMING LIKE AN IDIOT RIGHT NOW

PARADISICAL SEE EVEN MY NAME IS EXCITED


	19. Symbology

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_I'll hold your tears as a ransom_  
_Within the palm of my hand_  
_And tell you once again_  
_Don't tell me that you're scared_

_Alert the sawbones,_  
_Tell them that she's not scared._  
_She's got an army of saints armed with her prayers._  
_Wake the angels_  
_Tell them that she's not scared_  
_She won't be taking the next flight out of here._  
_This is only a test, she said,_  
_Broadcasting from hospital beds._

_With a relic in her right hand,_  
_She rushes to the front line,_  
_Stricken by the wounds across her chest_  
_The angels swear she's blessed with this medical test _  
_That unlocks the gates to the place that we live for_  
_We die for,_  
_I know that she's bound for._  
_And with a subtle wink and a mother's instinct._  
_She whispered..._

**Chapter Nineteen: Symbology**

The answer hit Katty like a brick through a window the day before she had to meet John Blake in the alley. Bane's increased cruelty had only added fuel to her desire to win this battle they were in, and she'd thrown all her wits into the problem of the mercenaries, and the conclusion she came to was so clear that it was concerning, like a cheat code had been handed to her by God himself.

The answer was the antibiotics. It was perfect; thousands of tiny pills, all headed to Bane's men- small, generic, oval shaped pills. Tasteless. Odorless.

Extremely easy to duplicate.

She sat down in the lab, crouching on her haunches, staring at the wooden boxes that held the little orange bottles, her mind racing. How difficult could it be, to come up with something that would incapacitate a person? How many drugs were there out in supermarkets and pharmacies, aimed at easing the slide into sleep, at keeping people asleep- and how many of those drugs were right at her fingertips in this exact lab?

How easy could it be, to kill hundreds of people?

She closed her eyes.

She didn't know if she could do it on her own. There were a few people at the hospital who knew a little about pharmacology, but nothing to the level of what she needed. She needed someone who specialized in making new drugs, in mixing existing ones to create a bastardization of the intended purpose, someone who could take that drug and package it up all pretty so the target would have no idea-

She needed Ezra.

Finding him, though, might not be quite as easy. She hadn't seen him since he'd helped her make Bane's medicine and she had no idea if he worked as a mercenary as well. She didn't know who his friends were or where he slept or what his schedule was, and she hadn't had the foresight to form bonds with any of Bane's mercenaries. Barsad was just too creepy, and he was the only one she had any regular contact with-

Katty opened her eyes and felt a smile creep across her face as she realized that that wasn't entirely correct, after all. There was one other person, an older Indian woman, who was kind to Katty and always had been.

There was Dev.

Katty rose to her feet slowly and stared down at the crate of pills, her mind buzzing with adrenaline. She was familiar with the way ideas felt, how they swirled about under her skin, and she had grown used to the danger too, the sharp, metallic knowledge that an idea could spell death for any number of people. But there was something in that fatalistic truth that made her mind even clearer, because it left her no choice. Failure simply wasn't an option and, at this point, she could remove herself from the situation and think about what, logically, had to be done. Yes, people could die, and, honestly, some probably would- but it was the best shot at overpowering Bane's army, and Katty couldn't let the chance slip past.

She left the lab, flicking the lights off behind her, and she didn't look back. A few people in the hallways gave her odd looks and she disregarded it. The rest of the day at the hospital went by quickly and Katty thought the whole time, running through different plans in her head. The first step was finding Ezra. After that, it would all have to be luck and guesswork- and keeping away from Bane. She didn't even know if Ezra would help her but she had a feeling he would; there had been a look in his eyes when she'd told him about the fledgling army that had been very familiar. She could recognize the fire she carried when it burned in other people, and though the fire in Ezra's eyes had been muted, for a few seconds, she had seen the burning in his mind. And she knew how to make that fire burn so much hotter.

She found herself filled with a burning purpose; it was one thing to plan for an attack that was theoretical and another to plan for one that was happening in five days. She ran over scenarios in her head, made lists of the questions she needed to ask- Bane had the mercenaries take the antibiotics in the morning, according to Langer, and if there was a way to replace them with a sleeping agent of some kind, then it would be that much easier at all to take back the city. There was Bane, who of course wouldn't take it, and Katty felt a thrill thinking about that, a horrible, vicious thrill at the thought that she might kill him in five days. There was a quiet voice in her head whispering, _forgive him before you become him _and she refused to acknowledge it. Killing Bane wouldn't be exactly like killing anyone else; she'd be doing the world a favor and if the trade was that she carried his blood on her soul, then so be it. Someone had to do it.

But for anything to become more than a fantasy, she had to find Ezra and she had to find him soon. She didn't want to give John Blake premature hope.

As it turned out, Ezra was just waiting to be found.

000

She went through Dev. She told the older woman that there was a problem with some of the medicine at the hospital and to send Ezra if at all possible and the next day, the day she had to meet John Blake in the alley, she was standing in the lab, her hands on her hips, when she heard the deep, accented voice behind her.

"There is nothing wrong with the medicine, is there?"

She whirled around to see him standing there and let her arms fall to her sides. Ezra's expression was mostly unreadable but there was something in it that seemed amused, too, and Katty drew comfort from that.

"No," she said, her voice very honest. "There's not."

Ezra's eyes roamed over the crates of pills and Katty realized that she wouldn't have to explain anything to him; she was smart but Ezra was something else entirely. His eyes flashed back to hers.

"Always the revolutionary," he murmured. Katty didn't know how she was supposed to respond to that and so she didn't; she just looked at him, knowing that her eyes would carry her point across. "You wish to switch the pills with something less benign, yes?"

"Yes."

"And you need my help."

"Yes."

"And what makes you think I want to help you?" There was nothing unkind in his voice. He sounded like a teacher, searching for an answer to a difficult question from a favorite student, and if Katty had anything, it was answers.

"Because people are dying who don't need to be. Families are being torn apart. Girls are being raped. There's an eight year old up in the safe room who was raped by her own uncle, and you know what he said, during?"

Her voice had started to shake slightly and she tried to control it, knowing that it wouldn't work because really, she didn't want it to; the second things like this stopped affecting her would be the second that she left humanity behind.

"He said, 'you have no idea how long I've been wanting to do this'. That girl's parents were some of the first people to be killed. She's lost- not everything, but pretty damn close to that and she's not the only one, there are so many people who have lost so much and it's only going to get worse. And I can help, but to do that… I need you."

Ezra was quiet for what felt like a very long time and Katty's heart was pounding but she was certain, too, that he would help her.

He gave a single, slow nod.

"What do you wish to replace the medicine with?"

And there it was- because a sedative hadn't been her first thought, not really. Her first thought had been poison, to end it all right then and this was a turning point in a way, her thought and Ezra's question, now, because she felt Bane hovering behind her with all of the blood on his hands, of his promise to make her into something new, and the old Katty never would have advocated for poisoning hundreds of people.

But she _was _something new.

"Poison," she said flatly. Ezra's eyes did not change and for a long time, a very long time, he simply looked at her.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet. "Do you realize what you are asking?"

She said nothing.

"You are asking to kill hundred of people, men and women, some of whom are younger than yourself. This is not a small thing."

"I know."

He lifted his eyebrows. "And, knowing my story, this is something you would ask? Knowing that not all of those people have chosen this for themselves?"

"It's war," she said quietly. "If it was pretty, we wouldn't be doing it right."

"You are asking me to make you into an angel of death. And in doing so, I will become one as well. You would damn us both?"

"Better two souls than twelve million."

He looked at her again, his amber eyes searching her face, and then he shook his head.

"I am sorry, Kathryn." Her name sounded strange with his accent wrapped around it, rhythmatic and musical. "I cannot give my soul for this. And you should not be willing to sacrifice yours."

She drew in a deep breath and then she nodded. "Alright. I have a plan B. Can you make it into a sedative?"

He eyed her.

"Now, that, I can do."

And so they went to work.

000

Langer kept everyone away from the lab and Katty and Ezra donned surgical masks, scrubs and gloves. She asked him why they didn't do this when they made Bane's medicine and he responded that they hadn't had the right materials then, or the time, but that safety was of utmost importance now. A burn could give them away, or a chemical spill on the fabric of their clothes.

She went on autopilot. She told Ezra what she needed- a way to incapacitate the mercenaries- and he began listing off chemicals that she couldn't even pronounce, let alone identify, but she went around the lab, reading labels and gathering up the right materials while Ezra started making notes in what looked like Arabic. She peered over his shoulder, trying to translate- she could read the words and knew what most of them meant and there was something about that that was so _cool_, to look at the squiggles and curves and dots and have them make sense in her head.

"How have you been?" Ezra asked her once they had all the materials, and Katty couldn't help but give a bark of laughter. Ezra gave her a look out of the corner of his eye.

"Sorry, I'm not laughing at you. That's just such a normal question and this is such a not-normal time- 's kind of funny. That's all. I've been… well, I've been."

_Pretty sure my terrorist captor was to kill me or fuck me or maybe both, pretty sure my feelings towards him are exactly the same and that is so messed up I don't know where to start and I feel sort of like I'm losing my mind and sort of like I'm the strongest person in the world-_

But she doubted that would go over well and so she kept her mouth shut about it.

"Will this work?" she asked Ezra a few minutes later and he glanced at her, his honey colored eyes flashing.

"Most likely," he said, his accented voice soft. Katty nodded and they continued to work in silence.

The day went by quickly. Katty didn't understand the majority of what they were doing but she could follow orders well enough, when she wanted to, and she and Ezra made good progress, working until about four in the afternoon.

"Thank you," she said when they called it a day, pulling on her coat and buttoning it up to her throat. Ezra turned those eyes on her and the gaze he fixed her in was unreadable but warm, underneath that, and Katty did not think he would betray her. "For helping. For… fighting a war that isn't yours."

His eyes searched hers for a moment and then he said, very quietly, "This has been my fight long before you, Miss Sherman."

And then he turned and left and she stood there, feeling very stupid, because of course this was his fight. It never had anything to do with her.

She left the room, locking the door and flicking off the lights behind her before shoving her hands into her pockets and climbing up the stairs to the cold afternoon light.

It was another blizzard day and Katty rolled her eyes, giving a great, heaving sigh because of course the one winter that it snowed heavy was the one when people were dying because they had no electricity. She ducked her head against the onslaught of precipitation and shoved her hands deeper into her pockets, squinting against the cold. The alley, when she came to it, was a blessing, and there was John Blake, leaning against the wall, face red from the cold, brown eyes glittering.

"Hey," he said.

"You are gonna love me," she replied and his eyebrows shot up. "I have a plan."

"Yeah?"

"There's this medicine. Antibiotics, that Bane has his guys take, every day, like clockwork. We got a new shipment in that they're going to start on a few days from now, and I have a- well, he's not really a friend, more like a contact really, but he can make drugs and he's helping me with one, something that will knock the mercs out cold. We aren't sure for how long it, really depends on each individual one, but we can incapacitate them. And we can attack."

"Why a sedative? Why not poison?"

"Well," said Katty, her voice careful. "He doesn't fell comfortable with that. It's a lot of blood on his hands-" (_and mine_, she thought but did not say) "-and since this is effective and less fatal, it… works."

John Blake was nodding, his eyes burning into hers. "This contact of yours… how do you know him?"

_Shit._

"He's one of Bane's," said Katty, her voice steady, and Blake's eyes tightened. "But I trust him, he doesn't like this, what's been happening, he only joined up with Bane because it was the only way to save his family. He's a good guy."

Blake exhaled. "I hope you're right. Do they all take the pills at the same time? Do you know?"

"Yeah. Early, in the morning. Eight am, on January second."

"Four days from now."

"Yes."

He exhaled sharply and didn't break eye contact, and then he gave a sharp nod. "Okay. Alright, we'll do this. I need you to keep me updated, alright? On… on _everything_. This has got to be airtight or a lot of people are going to die."

"If we do it right, a lot of people will die anyway," she said wryly and she felt a sudden pang of self-loathing. John Blake raised his eyebrows.

"You do have a point."

They stood in silence for a minute and Katty hugged herself, trying to keep warm.

"You ready for this?" he asked her. "There's every chance in the world it'll end ugly and you know what that'll mean better than most."

"I know," she said. "But we might not get another chance and I… I'm tired of being helpless. We've got a shot, we have to take it or we're giving up."

He nodded. "And Bane? What should we do with him?"

"What do you mean?"

He raised his eyebrows. "You know what I mean."

"We do what we have to." Her voice was flat. "Take him alive if we can, and if we can't, I put a bullet between his eyes."

Blake's laugh was more like a sharp breath but the point came through. "No love lost between the two of you, huh?"

"He's been manipulating me since day one," said Katty, flatly, the burning anger climbing up her throat. "Trying to- Stockholm Syndrome me, threatening me and then taking me shopping, teaching me how to shoot and how to fight, beating the shit out of me and then stitching me up and all the while calling me 'my dear', so, yeah, I'd say there's nothing lost there."

She couldn't bring herself to mention his darkening eyes or the way his hands lingered over her skin when they fought, how his touch turned into something almost gentle, curious, like her skin was a mystery he could not solve-

"I think something happened, a few days ago," she said, quietly, more to shut up her own memories than anything else. "I mean, he's never a nice guy, but most of the time he's calm and controlled and he just… it was like a… a hurt lion, you know? Lashing out at whatever he could. It was weird. I've never seen him like that before. He was… pissed, and covered in other people's blood."

Blake was frowning very deeply. "Do you have any idea why?"

She frowned too, her mind skimming over pieces of information, details, memories- and the thing she kept landing on was the bed. She'd been with Bane for over a month and she'd never, not once, seen his bed unmade. And it hadn't just been unmade, either, it'd been messy, the sheets thrown every which way.

"Yeah," she said slowly. "The bed was unmade. His bed always looks the same, I don't even know if he sleeps in it, but that day, it was all messy."

Blake's eyebrows shot up. "Do you think… he had sex, or something?"

And the pieces clicked into place. She stared at John Blake.

"Well, do you know who?"

"Yes," she said, her voice hard. "I know exactly who."

000

The apartment was empty when the elevator doors slid open and for a few minutes Katty just stood in front of it, her gut tingling, looking around the living room and kitchen, at the empty wall where a TV had probably hung once, letting her thoughts flow through her. They were heartbeats of full sentences, images and smells and connections and impossible details and red strings tying all of it together.

It all came back to the bed and she shrugged out of her jacket, tossing it onto the couch without a second thought and then she moved to Bane's room, her strides quick and her hands clenched at her sides, her heart hammering. The door to his room was open and the bed was untouched from how it had been- disheveled and messy and bathed in the gray winter light from the window.

It wasn't hard to put the pieces together, it really wasn't. Bane had slept with Talia al Ghul and after, something had gone wrong and she'd broken whatever served as his heart. When he'd smeared her face with blood his eyes had been terrifying; they were always cold but then they were black holes, and she knew that look. She'd seen it staring back at her every time she looked in a mirror for over a year and she could recognize it in someone else, though it looked strange, such a sad thing on such an inhuman man.

She went into her bedroom and grabbed her sketchbook and a pencil and sat on her bed, drawing her knees up to her chest as she leaned back against the headboard. The sketchbook was open on her knees and her fingers grasped the pencil, tightly, almost white-knuckling it- and then she stared to draw with a precision that was almost mathematical.

She wouldn't have exactly called what she was relaxed, but there was calmness in her that was so heavy it was almost the same thing. The fear that had been in her since that first day, since the explosion and the football stadium and Bane on the television, still wrapped around her and she was fairly certain that it always would, but she was calm, too, underneath that, because she was _doing _something. There were a thousand ways it could end in disaster and only one it would succeed but one was enough and she clung to it like a prayer as she drew. It was the city that formed under her pencil this time, the streets and alleys of Gotham and its skyline against a bright sun- the city had always been alive to her, breathing and warm and _home_, and now it was limping along in a stasis of cold and death that Bane had brought in his wake like a plagued shadow. She drew for a long time, pouring herself out onto the paper, erasing here and there and making this line dark and that line soft and a cloud in one spot, a river in the other-

And, soon enough, she realized that the city had become a face and she stopped, the point of the pencil hovering just above the tainted page as she stared down at the thing she'd created, her stomach tingling because it had been completely unconscious, really, for all that she drew her own face all the time. It wasn't egotistical or narcissistic; it was simply that she knew her face and she used it as a placeholder for humanity as a whole. But this was something different, this was probably the most accurate portrait of her that existed and it was made of buildings and angles and hard lines and, looking down at it, she felt that she understood something she hadn't before, even though she couldn't have given a name to what, exactly, it was.

She gave a great sigh and shook her head before pulling her shaggy hair away from her face, tying a ponytail at the base of her skull before putting the pencil back on the paper. It was a really good picture, after all, probably one of the best she'd ever drawn, and there was no point in letting a creative spell go to waste just because the symbols that existed in her life were becoming a little too real. She drew for a while longer, purposefully steering away from things related to the situation she was trapped in now, and she eventually stood and stretched, heading to the door, fully intending to make a cup of coffee and spend the rest of the night drawing and reading.

Only, it didn't exactly go that way.

She opened the door and turned into the hallway and then stopped, a few steps later, at Bane's doorway, her stomach going very cold and an electric jolt shooting up her spine.

He was standing in front of the window, shirtless, and that in itself wasn't that unusual, and there was blood on him, which wasn't unusual either, but the thing that was unusual was that the bed was made and his mask was sitting on it.

She stood, frozen, just staring at him. His back was to her and the gray winter light of the afternoon was wrapping around him, lighting up the edges of his torso, and there was blood dripping down his side, smeared around his lower back. She drew in a quiet breath and moved slowly into the room, her steps quiet and steady and she waited for him to acknowledge her because she knew he would.

She did not want to see his face.

He drew in a deep breath, the muscles of his back tensing and his right hand forming a fist and then relaxing at his side, and Katty studied him, the curve of his head and his neck, the slope of his shoulders, the hint of stubble on what she could see of his cheek. And then he spoke.

"Death has a particular sound." His voice was so raw and deep and rumbling and she'd thought, once, that it was like thunder, and that held true now, even as chills shot up and down her body. "The screams always sound the same."

She had two thoughts, almost simultaneously; the first was _'god, what a cliché'_, and the second was, '_he's not human'._

But she didn't say anything; partly because she had no idea what to say and partly because she was scared to make him angry. He was covered in blood and she remembered his threats against her best friend and she would risk a great deal, herself included, but she would not risk Holly. He was bleeding, though, and profusely; the wound seemed to be on his chest but she could see the blood sliding down his left side, and there was a lot of it.

"Is that your blood this time?" her voice was quiet and she saw the curve of his cheek lift in a smile that she knew wouldn't reach his eyes.

"Yes."

She made a fist, digging her fingernails into the meaty portion of her palm for a few seconds before inhaling slowly. _Forgive him before you become him_- so much easier said than done, but forgiveness was an action before it was a feeling. She did not want to help him. She wanted to watch him bleed and she wanted to be the cause of the blood. But she knew where that path led; the perfect example was standing with his back to her. She let the breath out.

"Do you need stitches?"

"It would seem so." His voice was so strange without the mask. It was still his voice but it was so raw and deep and almost hollow in the texture of it, and she would wonder for a long time whether this voice or the mechanical one was more unsettling.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes because it seemed like one of them was always sewing the other back up, and instead said, "I'll get the first aid kit. Again."

Turning on her heel, she strode out of the room and into the kitchen. She flicked the light on and pulled open the drawer that they kept the first aid kit- it would have felt almost domestic, except this was a first aid kit on steroids and there was nothing domestic about the two of them. There were needles and bandages and the usual things, but there was also a local anesthetic that Bane had never used on her, surgical thread, surgical tape, scissors, and a number of other instruments that would not have been out of place on an operating table. She grabbed it and put it on the table before grabbing towels and dampening a few of them, folding them neatly and putting those on the table, too, next to the kit, and then she folded her arms and she waited.

Bane emerged with his mask on and she felt relief surge through her that she wouldn't have to see his face just yet as she gestured loosely to the chair. He sat down, slowly, his gray eyes under those dark brows fixed unblinkingly on her face.

She took one of the damp towels and started to wipe the blood off his chest; someone had slashed him pretty deep and she realized as she washed the blood away that the gash could become very easily infected.

_Why the hell do you care?_

It was strange, she thought, to be cleaning blood off of him when he'd done nothing but cover her in it. She did clean it, though, and when he was no longer slicked with red, she took the curved needle, leaning down with her left hand on his chest to steady herself, and, holding her breath, she slid the needle through his skin.

She'd stitched up plenty of wounds by then but there was something about it she couldn't get used to, the blood that would coat her fingers and the feeling of flesh giving way for the tip of the needle. It was easier with Bane than anyone else, though, because she knew he couldn't feel it.

But he could feel her hand pressed against his chest and his eyes were burning into her face as she worked.

"Isn't it odd," he said, and at that proximity she could feel his chest rumble with the words, "how one of us is always putting the other back together?"

It caught her so off guard that her mouth fell open and she looked up at him, eyes going wide. He looked back at her, his brows tight over his dark eyes, the hollow, mechanical hiss emanating from the mask. For a few seconds they just looked at each other and then Katty regained control of herself and closed her mouth, looking away from him.

He spoke again, his voice careless and rumbling and sliding over the words. "If I were a man who believed symbols had power, I might think that carried some meaning."

"Everything carries meaning," she said, her voice flat. "And everything can be taken as a symbol if you're looking for some meaning to attach to it. Doesn't mean it's actually there."

"Spoken as a person who sees everything as symbols."

Her eyes flashed to his but she said nothing. She got that feeling again, when she resumed stitching with his eyes on her, that he'd watch her forever if she'd let him.

And that brought back the fire.

"How many people have you killed in the past two days?" she asked, her voice steady despite her pounding heart.

He chuckled. "Enough."

"I hope it's enough." She tied off the last stitch and wiped away what was left of the blood and then she smeared antibiotic ointment over the stitched up gash and she was not gentle, but it didn't matter because he couldn't feel pain anyway. He felt her touch, though, and she felt a twisted glee at the sight of goosebumps spreading over his skin when she touched him. She taped a bandage over the cut and then she stood up, looking down on him, letting her blood-stained hands fall to her sides. "Because this is the last time I will be putting you back together."

His face didn't change. "Yet you assume the role of the martyr so well, my dear."

"Not anymore. Something happened two days ago, I know that-" he stood abruptly so that he towered over her and she didn't even blink, "-but whatever it is, it does not warrant this massacre you've been on."

"I thought I warned you about speaking to me in this way."

"You did." Her voice was hard. "And considering you probably would have stood at your window and bled out if it wasn't for me, you can give me two minutes to say what needs to be said, and you can_ listen_."

His eyebrows did lift then and she wondered if she'd gone too far but it was too late; the anger was rushing through her and her voice was starting to shake, her teeth chattering behind the words.

"She broke your heart, didn't she? Talia? Or whatever serves as your heart, to be honest I'm surprised you're even capable of that level of devotion to a person, but you slept with her and she broke your heart and now you've gone all Jack-the-ripper and it has to stop, and it stops _now_."

For the first time, she actually moved closer to him, glaring up at him, her voice shaking but powerful, all the same, and she felt like she was expanding, like all the empty places inside her were being filled by anger. Bane's eyes were icy but that emptiness was receding, and it wasn't like she hadn't dealt with his anger before.

"Maybe it's good you've got something human about you, after all. It sucks, doesn't it?" Her voice went quiet. "To have something ripped outta you, something you didn't even know existed before they got their hands on it-"

"Stop."

"But guess what, life goes on- or it would, at least, if you weren't _you_, you could stop and look in the fucking mirror and realize that it's not the end of the world only you _want _to be the end of the world, don't you, you want to be the- the damn angel of death and you want me to be there right along with you at the gates of Hell and that's not going to fucking happen-" she was rambling and she knew it, gesturing wildly with her hands and his eyes weren't icy anymore, they were burning but the words kept pouring out as her voice rose up to a shout, "-and if you were stupid enough to fall in love with her then-"

And he snapped. He pushed her onto the table, sending the first aid tools scattering to the ground and she winced as her back hit the hard wood and her head, too, with a solid crack, and he leaned over her, everything about the set of him predatory, one big hand wrapping around her throat and the other planted by her head, his body over hers, pinning her in place.

She was stunned for a moment and then a sense of victory flooded through her and she met his stormy gave levelly.

"It's her, isn't it?" she asked quietly. "Talia al Ghul is the person pulling your strings."

"You have no idea what you are talking about." His mechanical voice was dangerously hard and gutturally low and her eyes searched his face above the mask.

"Think I don't know manipulation when I see it?" she said, even more softly, and the lines around his eyes tightened. "You did read my file, you know what happened to me, and I can read the signs."

He said nothing, and the rasping, mechanical sound of his breathing slid over her while his eyes burned.

She grinned at him. "Doesn't it _suck_ to have someone reach into your head and play god?"

And then she leaned up, craning her neck, and he let her, so that she was very close to the mask. The smell of him surrounded her and he was warm, where his body pressed into hers, and the hand on her throat had moved to the triangle of muscle between her neck and her shoulder, held firmly against the pressure point there.

"Who was supposed to break who here, Bane?" she whispered, her eyes searching his.

His eyes darkened and his hand on her shoulder tightened and she just grinned at him more widely. He was so close that she could feel his heart beating, and he was very solid and very warm.

And then he stood up, suddenly, his hands falling away from her and his burning eyes freezing back over. Katty sat up, slowly, her back and her head aching, still grinning at him as she crossed her arms over her chest as she studied his face and his torso and the angry set of his shoulders, and rose to her feet.

"I'm going to go for a walk."

His eyebrows lifted. "Oh, you are?"

She raised her hand, forming a fist and showing him the underside of her wrist, where the lump of the tracker was clearly visible. "It's not like you're going to lose me."

"No," he said, his voice hollow and mechanical and hard. "For your sake, I hope not."

She gave him a last smile and lift of her eyebrows and then pushed past him into the hallway. She pulled on her boots and jacket quickly and shoved her gun down the front of her pants before pulling her hair out of the ponytail and running her fingers through it, letting it fall around her face as a curtain of protection from the cold.

Bane was standing where she'd left him and she said not a word to him as she walked past him and climbed in the elevator.

She met his eyes and smiled at him just as the doors slid closed.

000

Bane, for the second time that week, stood completely still as he watched the elevator carry away a woman, except for this time, it was not pain and ice pounding through his body, but fire.

000

Night had fallen over Gotham and the clouds had receded, letting the stars shine over the city. For a few minutes Katty stood outside the building, her hands shoved into her pockets, staring up at the sky. Cities and stars didn't go together and she _ached _at how beautiful it was, millions of pinpricks of light swirling and shining in the inky black above her. There were a few inches of snow on the ground and it caught and reflected the light from the stars, and she felt, suddenly, that the city wasn't lacking for all that there were no lights.

She started to walk. She wasn't going anyway in particular but her spine was tingling and some sixth sense was telling her to move and maybe she'd find something she hadn't been smart enough to look for in the first place.

The streets were deserted and there were next to no lights on, and after passing a few alleys, she pulled her gun out of her pants and switched on the safety.

Later, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to regret this.

About two minutes later, a gloved hand clapped over her mouth and an arm snaked across her chest and pulled her back into an alley, her assailant pulling and her scrambling to keep her feet under her and he backed into a building that was dark and deserted. She bit down on his hand, reflexively, and threw an elbow backwards and it found a torso-

And a high, maniacal laugh sounded in her ear as the arm across her chest tightened. Her blood ran cold.

It was the Joker.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Tell Them She's Not Scared" by Envy On the Coast

A/N: ...

hi guys

XD

life is just really busy. BUT christmas break is in about three weeks and I will have LOTS of time to write then, so there will be plenty of updates to look forward to! I'm not sure if I'll be able to update between now and then, but they will become much more frequent once I'm on break.

As always, you guys are the absolute BEST! I hope everyone has had an amazing thanksgiving, or an amazing thursday for the non-americans, and i can't can't can't wait to hear what you think! lOVE YOU ALLLLL

Paradisical


	20. Woman King

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

**A/N:**** Revised on 12/30**

* * *

_Hundred years, hundred more  
Someday we may see a  
Woman king, sword in hand  
Swing at some evil and bleed._

**Chapter Twenty: Woman King**

Fear flooded her and she acted instinctively; she threw her elbow back again, harder that time, then lifted up her foot and stomped down, hard, on his instep before reaching up and grabbing his arms. She gritted her teeth and sank down to her knees, pulling him with her, and then she lurched forward and he went flipping over her back, laughing the whole time, and she felt a surge of power because this was the Joker and she was winning and then, in the next second, the horrible thought came to her that she was winning because he was letting her.

His arms jerked away from her and like a flash, she'd pulled out her gun and was kneeling on his chest, her knee poised to crush his windpipe if need be, the muzzle of the gun pointed between his eyes. He bared his yellow teeth at her in a painted grin and her finger tightened on the trigger and she would have killed him because she _remembered_-

And then there was a familiar, chalky click behind her head and she froze, her heart pounding with adrenaline and fear as the Joker cackled underneath her.

"You know," she said, her voice shaking, "it _really_ isn't a good idea to hold a gun that close to someone's head."

And then she rolled off the Joker, kicking upwards and she felt her foot hit the gun that was being held on her and she saw it go spinning- she reached up and, through a stroke of sheer luck, grabbed it clumsily, and then she was on her feet again, a gun in both hands, aimed on her two assailants.

Then her eyes fell on the woman who'd held the gun on her and her jaw dropped.

"_Caroline_?"

She registered several things very quickly: Caroline, always slender, looked almost skeletal; Caroline was bone white and wearing red and black; Caroline's smile did not reach her eyes.

Her best friend held her arms out wide. "Gonna shoot me, Katty?"

"I'm seriously considering it." But she was already moving to the red-head and she hugged her, tightly but carefully, the two guns still held awkwardly in her hands. Caroline's thin arms snaked around Katty's shoulders and for a long time the two girls just stood there, holding each other, and Katty started to shake and she gritted her teeth, not sure what to do with everything flooding through her, everything that had changed and the mass murderer behind her.

The mass murderer who would have killed she and Bane if not for Caroline; what the hell was going on?

Then they pulled apart and Katty held Caroline's gun out to her, raising her eyebrows. "I love you, Caroline, but point that at me again and I'll blast his kneecaps out."

"Not mine?"

"Absolutely not. You have lovely knees."

"I missed you, too."

"What the hell happened? Bane has Holly and my family is on the run, what happened to you three? Where's Brooklynne?"

She heard the Joker climbing to his feet behind her and immediately she twisted her torso, extending the arm and pointing her gun at him.

"Do not move again," she told him, lifting her eyebrows. He held his hands up in a mocking parody of compliance and then grinned at her, the paint on his face cracking, and her skin crawled as she listened to Caroline without taking her eyes off of the clown.

"Katty, put the gun down. I have no idea where Brooklynne is. Last I knew, she was with Holly-"

"Also," her voice was hard and her teeth where chattering, "what the _fuck _are you doing with him?"

"He saved my life, Katty, and he's on- well, 'our' side is a bit of a problematic phrase, but it gets the point across. Put the gun down, now, please."

The sound Katty made was more of a bark than a laugh as disbelief and anger coursed through her veins. "That's not going to happen."

"We're on the same side," said Caroline, her voice growing impatient as her red brows furrowed. "He's been helping take down the liberation-"

"That's noble, Caroline, but old habits, and all, and why would he do that anyway?" Katty snapped, narrowing her eyes at the Joker. "I thought you were big on the chaos and anarchy thing, not to mention blood and murder. You and Bane would make great pals."

His grin widened but his eyes didn't change, and she thought again what a massive mistake Bane had by letting this man out of the cage; Bane had, at least, some rules, and the Joker had none. She'd just been a kid when it happened, the explosions and the murders and the fall of the Dark Knight and the death of the White Knight, but she remembered. She remembered the fear and the blood and her father keeping a gun next to the door; she remembered the broadcasts and the last great exodus out of the city.

"Even I have _limits_," he said, in a voice that seemed to be made of at least ten different voices, and he placed a hand on his suit in a gesture of sincerity that was heavy with mocking.

"Yeah, okay," she said. "Caroline, what's going on?"

Caroline sighed and Katty could almost see her rolling her green eyes and then she moved around Katty and the gun held in her extended hand so that she was standing by the Joker.

"He's helping," she said again, lifting her eyebrows. "Can you trust me on this?"

Katty gave her a look and that time Caroline's eye roll was very visible.

"Bane's guys were coming after me, probably due to something you did, so, thanks for that, I'll really owe you one later. The Joker pulled me out of their way and saved my life. He's not doing this for any noble reason or anything like that-"

"-clearly-"

"- but it's _such fun_," said the Joker, his voice sliding very low on the last word. His eyes were black pits and his teeth were yellow and a slightly dank smell, like half-dried creeks and water left sitting too long in a sink, came off the pair of them. His shoulders were slouched under the purple velvet and his hair was greasy and greenish and there was something about him, some evil aura, that sank deep into the pit of her stomach like a stone.

"Happy?" asked Caroline.

"Not really."

The Joker and Caroline, his eyes dark and hers very bright, exchanged a look that Katty understood on some levels but didn't on most; there was a partnership in that look, a twisted sort of trust that she recognized, and she knew it was born of need and situation but she did not like it. Then Caroline spoke and the Joker's scarred lips twisted in what had to be his version of a smile.

"It's time we showed you something."

Katty stared at them for a moment, uncomprehending, because Caroline getting the Joker to not shoot her on an empty street was one thing, but this- this was different, this was them as equals, this was not normal or okay on any level that existed and Katty was completely baffled because Caroline had humanity in spades and the Joker seemed to be more lizard than person.

"Showed me what?"

"What's left of the army we raised."

"Army," said the Joker, softly. "Scared fathers and teachers and, ah… _doctors. _Against. A horde of the most _merc-_iless things in the world." He gave a quiet giggle and Katty wanted to hit him and vomit. "Not an army, my sweet, _sweet _girls. An _offering._"

Caroline laughed and the laugh didn't suit her, in more ways than one; Caroline wouldn't have laughed at that and Caroline's laugh wasn't _like _that, hard and brittle and a little cruel. This was wrong, all of it, and Katty felt an overwhelming urge to run but she drew in a slow breath instead.

"I didn't know there was still an army."

Caroline gave a terse nod, the laugh lingering on her thin face. "It's grown, actually. Doubled in size, probably."

"Well. That's…" She wanted to say 'good', but she couldn't quite get the word out. It _was_ good, it was brave and just and the Right Thing but there was a rumbling mechanical voice in her head calling it 'stupid', too, and that voice rose above hers. "Alright. Show me. You-" she gestured at the Joker with the gun, -"in front of me. If you do anything weird, I will shoot you."

His dark eyes glinted above the scars. "You can, ah... certainly _try_."

"Follow me," said Caroline and then she walked past Katty.

"Go," Katty told the Joker, and he gave her a mocking bow before falling into step next to Caroline, his shoulders hunched and his strides long. Katty put the gun in her pants but kept her hand close to it, and she followed them to the back of the old building, every step and sound amplified in the massive, empty space. Katty kept her eyes on Caroline, sauntering along with the Joker, and they reached the back of the building to see a small door that Caroline pushed open and walked into, the slouching Joker on her heels.

Katty followed wordlessly.

There were stairs, winding downwards, lit only by a faint bluish glow that rose from whatever was waiting for them at the bottom. Caroline's square shoulders and slim form were silhouetted by the light and Katty realized, fiercely, how much she'd missed her friend- she pondered in the same moment how much Caroline had changed, too, and she wondered how much of that had to do with the Joker and she felt a surge of emotion located somewhere between sadness and anger.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Katty's jaw dropped as she stared around the room she now stood inside. One wall was covered in wires and glowing screens that looked like something out of a science fiction movie and there was a redheaded woman in glasses and a wheelchair, sitting in front of it, typing something on a keyboard and staring at one of the blue screens intently.

"Barbara," said Caroline, and the girl started and then, when her eyes fell on Katty, her face opened in complete shock and then closed in anger and her eyes flashed to Caroline, furious and narrowed behind her glasses.

"What the hell have you done?"

"One rebel cap_tive_, my rolling angel," said the Joker and then he laughed; the woman, Barbara, didn't even look at him.

"She's been with _Bane _for almost two months, Caroline, what the hell is wrong with you-"

"She hasn't turned," said Caroline shortly. "And she can help."

"Help." Barbara's voice was full of derision. "Right. A nineteen year old."

"Twenty," Katty corrected automatically, and the look Barbara shot her then almost made her recoil.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, her voice very flat. "What a difference, a year makes. A twenty year old, thank God, we're all saved-"

"Hey," said Katty, who had now moved on the emotional scale from 'shocked' to 'annoyed and a little hurt', "-I didn't exactly put a sign on my head that says 'If you're a psychotic clown, please kidnap me', I really just wanted to go for a walk-"

"-fine, then," snapped Barbara. "Continue on your walk."

"Barbara." Caroline's voice was hard and whip thin. "We are losing people, we have no strategy, no plans-"

"-and you think the twenty year old can help?"

"She's the reason we have anyone at all," said Caroline, a frown twisting her pretty features as she looked at Barbara. Katty's brow was furrowing as she looked between the two red-headed women.

"That was before," Barbara was saying. "She's been with Bane for too long and people have gotten hurt because of her-"

The sharp, familiar pain clawed at Katty's throat and for a second she couldn't breathe. Barbara didn't notice, and neither did Caroline, but the Joker seemed to; their eyes met, and he smiled.

_What happened to you?_

"-and it's better to lose people than to have them be killed."

"What'll happen if we just wait it out?" Caroline's eyes were burning.

"Guys." Katty's voice was quiet. "Stop, both of you. Caroline, why did you bring me here? What do you what from me?"

Caroline and Barbara exchanged a look before the younger redhead angled her body towards Katty.

"We need help," she said, with no frills in her familiar voice. It was hard, and business-like, and all facts. "We need a leader, and a plan-"

"And you came to me."

Another terse nod. Katty felt cold and numb and off and she felt angry, too, deep in her bones.

"Caroline," she said, quieter still, "I am a _prisoner_. I have next to no freedom, I have a terrorist literally breathing down my neck twenty-four-seven, and when I screw up, people get shot. You can't ask me to do this. There are others-"

"-but the others aren't you."

"It doesn't have to be me."

"Katty," said Caroline, a deep sadness in her voice, "other people have tried. I tried, so did Brooke, and Holly, before we were all scattered. Other people tried. And people left, none of the plans work, people died-"

"-and you think I'm gonna be your savior? Despite the fact I have no idea what I'm doing- Caroline, people are going to _die. _I'm not a strategist, I don't know how to plan-"

"-but people will follow you," said Caroline, her eyes burning as she stepped closer. "They trust you."

"Sure, they trust me enough to lead them to their death. I'm sorry, I can't do this. It will make things worse for everyone- you have to find someone else."

And she turned on her heel and strode away from them, tripping her way up the stairs and into the warehouse that sat atop the small room at the bottom of the stairs. She was shaking and gasping, a little, clenching her hands into tight fists at her sides.

She heard someone following her and her hand reflexively twitched to her gun-

"Katty, wait!"

She slowed to a halt and stood still for a moment before turning around. Caroline was walking towards her with a familiar swagger but the set of her face was all wrong- everything was completely wrong.

"Caroline," said Katty, a quiet plea in her voice, "I can't."

"You think I'd ask if there was another choice?"

"There is no way I can help you-"

"That's not true and you know it. Katty, over half of those people are here because of you. Because you knocked on their doors and reminded them that we don't have to take this lying down, because you took care of them before Bane took you."

"There are other people in this city who can do the same thing-"

"-maybe," said Caroline, her voice growing very short. "But not like you did."

For a few seconds Katty stared at her and Caroline met her gaze unflinchingly. This was different, too; the old Caroline tried to please everyone and manipulated people by manipulating situations, but this Caroline was hard and unyielding and strangely honest.

"I can't," said Katty, raising her eyebrows. "I'm sorry."

Caroline's eyes narrowed and her brows pulled in tightly over them.

"I knew Bane would change you," she said flatly. "Didn't think he'd make a coward out of you."

"Excuse you?"

"You heard me just fine."

"I'm trying to be _smart_ here, I'm trying to keep people alive-"

"-so what do you want me to tell them? 'Sorry, but the person who brought you here is too scared to fight with you, just go home and wait for Bane to blow us sky high'?"

"That's not-"

Caroline pointed a finger behind her, towards the doorway and the stairs and the room with the Joker and the woman named Barbara.

"Those people are here because _you _brought them out of their homes, Katty. _You_ are responsible for them. You owe it to them to try."

Katty stared at her friend, tall and skinny and strong, and felt an incredibly confusing mixture of anger and guilt and pride. Her hand clenched and unclenched several times and she thought, furiously-

Caroline was right. Not about her being the right person to lead, but about her being responsible for the people she'd gathered. For the first time she realized, with a stomach churning sort of guilt, that she _was _responsible for them, that even if they hadn't gathered _for _her they'd gathered _because _of her, and she felt a sinking kind of panic at the thought.

"You're right," she said, quietly, and Caroline didn't blink. "You're right."

Slowly, Caroline let her arm fall, but she kept Katty transfixed in that sharp green stare.

"You'll help?"

"I'll do what I can, but not like I did. I'm still Bane's captive. I can help, I can- make inspirational speeches, I can try and help plan, but I can't- I don't know if I can lead."

"Why not?"

_Why in the world would you want me to? _She thought.

"Because I don't know if that person exists anymore," she said instead. Caroline's face softened and Katty recognized her again.

"It was just you, Katty," she said. "It still is. Come on."

They walked side by side, that time, until they reached the thin staircase and Katty once again followed her friend into the blue light. The Joker was leaning by a door opposite the staircase that Katty guessed their army (he'd been right about that, though, it wasn't really an army and she knew it but she had nothing better to call it) was behind, and Barbara was sitting at that station full of technology with a thin, iPhone-esque device in her left hand and an extremely irritated look on her face.

"For the record," she said in a hard voice, "this is a dumbass idea, Caroline, and people are going to die."

"So you're okay with it, then?" Caroline asked lightly, and Barbara shot her a look that said, very clearly, 'go to hell'.

"Not even a little bit," she said, flatly.

"What can I do to change your mind?" Caroline asked, and Barbara nodded at Katty.

"You can shut up so I can talk to her."

Katty was instantly flooded with the horrible feeling that she'd done something very wrong.

Caroline made a sweeping gesture as if to say 'all yours' before stepping back into the shadows, leaning against the wall next to the Joker. She stood very close to him and Katty frowned but decided to keep her mouth shut; Barbara was very serious and if she was entirely honest with herself, the Joker terrified her.

"Are you working for Bane?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he's a psychopathic, mass-murdering terrorist with a god-complex."

"Has he tortured you?"

"Depends on your definition of torture."

"Answer the question."

_Blood on the snow and threats, big hands on her hips and exhaustion in her bones as he levied punches at her, again and again, ordering her to defend herself-_

"Yes."

"Physically or mentally?"

_Both._

"Mentally."

Barbara had brown eyes and they were narrowed at Katty from behind thin glasses as she tapped absentmindedly on the device in her left hand. Katty met her gaze evenly and tried to calm her pounding heart.

"He lets you work at the hospital, doesn't he?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

Barbara leaned forward in her chair, her eyes narrowing further. "Guess."

"Probably because he figures if I'm busy, I'm less likely to try and kill him. Also he made me steal medicine for him, so there's that."

"How does he know you won't run away?"

Katty lifted her right arm and pointed to the lump of the tracker in her wrist and Barbara's fingers stilled on the device in her hand.

"Tracker," said Katty shortly. "It shows him my location and my heart rate."

And, as she said it, she started to wonder- if he'd been watching, he'd have known her heart rate was significantly up, known she'd been attacked, and he hadn't come for her. He wasn't the sort of guy to let his pets wander off and she wondered if he'd fallen asleep, or if he'd known and simply hadn't cared after the vitriol she'd spewed at him. She hoped it was that latter.

"Barbara," said Caroline softly.

"Not yet," snapped the older woman.

Katty looked between the two of them, confused, and Barbara put the device in her hand next to one of the computers.

"Would you say he trusts you?"

"No."

"Do you trust him?"

"No."

"Have you had sex with him?"

Katty started and Barbara raised her eyebrows. "No."

"Has he sexually abused you?"

"Wow, I never knew I could get so tired of being asked the same question. No."

"If you resume your role as a leader-" she said the entire phrase like it tasted of vinegar, "-do you have a plan?"

"Actually," said Katty, slowly, thinking of John Blake and Ezra and bottles of pills, "yes."

"What is it?"

"I'd rather not say just yet."

"And why not?"

"Because I don't know who I can trust with the information."

Barbara gave a snort and raised her eyebrows. "At least you aren't a complete idiot."

Irritation rose in Katty's stomach but she didn't act on it and instead gave Barbara an extremely unimpressed look.

"If you aren't going to share your plan, what's the point of you being here?"

"I didn't say I wasn't going to share it," corrected Katty. "I said I wasn't going to share it yet. As to why I'm here, you'll have to ask the wonder twins over there, because I really did not have a lot of say in this."

"But you're staying."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Caroline met her eyes.

"Because I'm responsible for those people," she said quietly, looking back to Barbara. "I'm the one who brought them here."

"You think they're fighting for you?" Barbara's voice was soft and filled with poison and Katty shook her head.

"No, definitely not. But- because of me. Because I knocked on their doors. The only part I played was the- the bell ringer. But I did ring the bell, I did- call for war, and now these people are still fighting, and they need… someone. They deserve better than me, but according to Caroline, I'm what you have. So… I'm here. And I'll do what I can."

It seemed like Barbara stared at her for a very long time, her eyes unreadable apart from the anger etched into the angles of her face. Katty met her gaze and dug her nails into the meat of her palms to steady herself and to give herself an anchor- she let Barbara size her up, let her stare and judge and calculate because, really, Katty didn't blame her.

"Listen," she said when the silence grew to be too much. "I'll follow your lead, here. I've been out of commission for two months, I really don't know what things are like for the people who've been out fighting. So, if that makes any difference at all, it's… well, it's the truth. I'll follow your cues."

The silence stretched on and Barbara's face didn't soften but the hardness seemed to become less angry and more resolute. Katty held her ground and avoided Caroline's eyes.

"Alright," said Barbara finally. "But the second any of this starts to feel off to me, you're out. Got it?"

Katty nodded. "Yeah, I got you."

"Scan her," Barbara said shortly, and without a word, Caroline pushed herself off the wall with a leonine grace and took what looked like half a hair straighener off of the table full of tech and ran it over Katty's body- it beeped when it reached her wrist, the one that carried the tracker, and something started to make sense to Katty, all of the technology and the strange contraption Caroline was holding, even the Joker, half cloaked in shadows, dark eyes gleaming.

"Hold out your arm," commanded the redhead girl in the chair, and Katty blinked, confused.

"Why?"

"What did you just say about following my cues?"

"Right. Sorry."

She stuck out her arm and Caroline gave her hand a quick squeeze before holding what had to be some sort of tracer or scanner over the lump in Katty's wrist.

"You can't take it out," Katty told Barbara. "He'll know, plus he said something about it being on or under or inside a vein or something, so unless you have a surgeon on hand-"

"I'm not taking it out," said Barbara shortly, turning away from Katty and facing one of the screens, her hands poised over the keyboards, her angular face illuminated by blue light. "I'm scanning the signal."

Two thoughts; _how in the hell, _and, _this is so freaking cool._

"Why?"

Barbara's lips tightened. "So that I can hack it."

Katty felt a sudden sensation of falling and then another sensation, this one of clarity. A few seconds later the screen of the laptop glowed more brightly and Katty saw strings of numbers run across it and Barbara's eyebrows tightened as her glasses reflected the screen back at itself.

"Got it," she murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "Here."

And she grabbed the device she'd been tapping on earlier and tossed it to Katty without looking up; Katty caught it, gracelessly, before shooting Caroline a confused look. Her friend's face was unreadable and half bathed in shadows and Katty looked down at the thin tablet in her hands instead; it looked like an iPhone in size and shape, but it was different, too, streamlined, with a small circular button on the back.

"What is this?" she asked slowly, turning it over and running her thumb over the slight indentation of what had to be the power button.

"Something that will probably save your life," said Barbara shortly before turning herself to face Katty once more. "Press the button."

She did. A banner and a touchpad immediately popped up and Katty glanced up at Barbara, her thumbs poised over the keypad.

"There's a password."

Barbara's face was unreadable. " 'The bat'. No spaces."

A shiver went down Katty's spine and goosebumps lifted on her arms as the familiar silhouette of Gotham's dark knight flashed into her mind- she typed in the two words and the banner disappeared and a white map on a black background appeared- Katty recognized it instantly as Gotham, as home, and felt a strange pang.

"I've hacked in to the tracking system he's using on you," said Barbara, her voice flat, "and with that, you can make yourself appear to be anywhere you what to be. Tap on a place in the map or press the little book icon in the lower right corner and type an address, and your tracking signal will move to that place. There's no way to make it look like you're moving, though, so no big jumps. When you choose a location, it'll ask you for confirmation, and all you have to do it press the Y button. Try it now. Make it look like you're back out on the street."

She zoomed in gingerly and pressed on the sidewalk outside the representation of the building she was in; immediately a tiny screen popped up that read:

**You have requested to change location. Y/N**

She pressed the Y and the pop-up screen faded and the dot moved and then resumed its slow pulsing.

Katty looked up and stared at Gordon.

"How did you get this? And- all that?" She gestured loosely at the wall of incredible technology and Barbara's eyes didn't leave hers.

"I used to work for Wayne Enterprises," she said, "so I took what I needed."

Katty frowned as she examined all of the monitors, what looked like surveillance stations, different screens with maps and slowly moving dots- lines and lines of numbers running across two different screens, sets of headphone and microphones and other things Katty couldn't name.

"I didn't know Wayne Enterprises had stuff like this," she said slowly. "It looks… like intelligence gear." She met Barbara's eyes. "Is it?"

A pause. Then a quick nod.

"Did you work in intelligence?"

A strange look crossed the Joker's face but it was gone as suddenly as it appeared and Katty didn't think much of it.

"Yes." Her voice was very stiff and Katty nodded.

"That's- that's really cool. I was planning on applying to the CIA, before- before all this."

Barbara's eyebrows furrowed slightly as she sized Katty up again and Katty felt a slight shift between them, some level of understanding.

There were a few moments of heavy, awkward silence and Katty looked between Caroline and the Joker and Barbara, very much wishing one of them would break the silence, and finally speaking when it became clear that no one else would.

"So," she said, and her voice seemed uncomfortably loud in the small room, "what now?"

The Joker looked at Caroline from underneath hooded eyes, his twisted grin snaking across his face. Caroline returned the grin and it was a strange mirror of his; it was the same grin only a little closer to the light, the same grin, only a little less twisted.

"I believe," he said softly, and his eyes flashed to Katty on the last syllable, "that's- _our _cue."

Katty's brows furrowed and she looked back to Barbara, who was regarding the pair of them with a faint look of disgust on her features that made Katty suddenly very afraid for her friend.

Bane was bad, no doubt about it, but the Joker was something else completely. The Joker was beyond morals or reason or salvation, there was no logic in his actions- if Bane was ice then the Joker was a hurricane, shrieking and careening constantly out of control, and Caroline was in the eye of the storm. The Joker put a gloved hand on the doorknob and Katty realized, suddenly, that the building was more than it appeared to be, and she also realized that she was terrified to face the people she'd recruited. She'd called for war because she thought it was the right thing to do but Barbara was right, she was only a kid, really, and she'd had no idea what it would mean, to take those lives on her shoulders. She knew she had to face them, had to accept that what she'd done had consequences, and she had to give those people what they needed, even if, for whatever reason, what they needed was her.

"How many are there?" she asked suddenly. "People, I mean. There were about two hundred when I was taken, weren't there?"

Caroline nodded. "I think we're past four hundred now."

"Four hundred and eighty-_one_," said the Joker, his voice sliding over Katty's skin like slime.

"You counted?" Caroline asked him incredulously, and those empty eyes flashed to her.

"Like _sheep._"

She's going to hit him, Katty thought.

Caroline laughed.

She pushed it down, the disbelief and the disgust and the dark question that had to be asked but _later, _and she faced Barbara again.

"Is it alright if I ask some questions?" she asked, and was glad to hear that her voice sounded much more in charge than she felt. "So that I'm more prepared than… then what I am now, which is not prepared at all."

Barbara gave a single nod and folded her hands in her lap and fixed Katty in that stare that was really as much of a glare as it was a stare; she'd have made a fantastic teacher.

"What's this building?"

"It was a speakeasy, during the prohibition," said Barbara easily. "The building on the top was a warehouse, this room was where the members came to get through that door, which leads to the actual speakeasy."

Katty nodded. "Do the people always stay here?"

"About fifty do. The ones who have no power, or who've been kicked out of their homes. The rest come when they can."

"What do you do? When you… gather?"

Barbara exchanged a glance with Caroline. "Send out small raiding parties, mostly. Kill any mercenaries we come across, take what food and clothes we can find, blow up buildings, cause trouble for Bane's people."

"Whatever you did the night of the mob a few weeks ago," said Katty, unable to repress a grin, "that sure worked. Bane was really on edge."

Something glinted in Barbara's eyes and her lips twitched. "Good."

"We're going to go rally the troops," interjected Caroline, and it was a testament to her sarcasm that it wasn't readable in her voice. "You two come when you're ready."

The door opened with a creak and a beam of yellowish light appeared across the floor, shining over Barbara; there were voices, loud and hard and Caroline and the Joker slipped through the open door and it closed behind them, shutting away the light and the sound.

"Okay," said Katty, very slowly, staring at the place where they'd disappeared, "that's convenient, because I am really, really confused." Her eyes flashed to Barbara. "What is going on with those two?"

"They're complicated," said Barbara shortly, in a tone that indicated she didn't much care for the subject. "Came out of the blue one day a couple weeks ago, both of them in make-up and costumes, armed to the goddamn teeth with guns and explosives, and after the night of the mob, they decided to lend us their… talents." The word was full of distaste on her tongue and Katty felt a surge of trepidation.

"Talents meaning…."

Something seemed to have closed behind Barbara's eyes. "They're very good at making other people bleed."

Katty drew in a quick breath and nodded; Barbara seemed to be watching her very carefully.

"And people trust them?"

"No. But they're effective, and every good army needs someone to do the ugly stuff."

Katty shook her head then, different images flashing behind her eyes. "Jesus."

There were a few minutes of silence as Katty wracked her brain for other questions; she knew they were there but she seemed to be blanking and her stomach was twisting with a horrible nervousness.

"Your plan," said Barbara, her voice hard and flat but cautious, too, "what can you tell me?"

And Katty knew, right then, that if she wanted this woman to trust her- and she did, she really did, she did not want to be alone anymore and she had John Blake but this was different- then she would have to trust her first.

"There's a cop who's been working to put together an attack. I'm meeting him tomorrow, so- do you want me to bring him? He's the mastermind, I don't even know most of the plan, but-"

"-what's his name?"

Her instinct was to shut her mouth but she forced it open, instead, and prayed that she was making the right decision. "John Blake."

Barbara rolled over to the laptop and typed his name into some sort of database- immediately a picture of him popped up, and his familiar face was intensely comforting, and there were rows of information beside the picture. Barbara looked at the screen for a few seconds, typed in something else, and a new screen opened, with what looked like scanned documents that she scrolled down.

"I know who this is," she said a few moments later. "He's been working with my brother."

"With- who?"

"Jim Gordon."

"You're commissioner Gordon's sister?"

A brusque nod.

"God, y'all have some heroic genes."

Barbara's lips twitched and she closed the screen and turned to face Katty again.

"You can bring him."

"Okay. I normally leave for the hospital around eight, and I think he said he'd be there in the morning, so if we're not here by ten, something's up."

Barbara nodded.

"I have… one more question."

"Yes."

"Why did you change your mind? About me?"

Barbara looked at her for a moment, her gaze level and cool and full of calculation, and Katty waited.

"Caroline's right," she said. "We're losing people. We've had a few victories, killed a few bad guys, but nothing that will make a difference. And you, for whatever reason, have something inside you that inspires other people to madness. And that's what we need."

Katty nodded and Barbara's eyes stayed dark but became slightly curious.

"Do you know what it means?" she asked softly. "To be a leader."

Katty said nothing, and after a few minutes, Barbara continued.

"You probably think it's about sacrifice, and you'd be right. But you think it's your sacrifice, don't you?"

A pause, and then Katty nodded. Barbara's lips twisted into a smile that was as sad as it was hard, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet.

"Being a leader isn't about sacrificing yourself. Being a leader is about sacrificing the people who trust you to lead them home."

Everything in Katty's body rebelled against the notion; she gave a hard start and stared at Barbara, her heart pounding.

"That's what you have to do. That's what you have to learn. When you do this, when you take this on, you become a little more than human." It would have sounded melodramatic, from anyone but her, but Barbara's eyes were hard and her voice was honest and there was a past in her voice that Katty could only imagine, Barbara Gordon's own story unfolding in her words. "As it is now, we're barely hanging on, and those people behind that door need something to cling to. And we're giving it to them. When you're in there, talking to them, _look _at them. And picture them dying, because that is what you have to sacrifice."

The words solidified and sank into her stomach like a block of ice and they seeped into her veins, too, as she realized that dying was easy but letting others die was something else entirely. A few seconds passed and she gave a single nod of understanding.

There was the tiniest glint of compassion in Barbara's eyes.

"Off we go," she said, and turned away from Katty, moving to the door.

The room was crowded and warm and filled with artificial light. There were arches and other architectural structures Katty couldn't have named along the walls, all carved in a nouveau style that, under normal circumstances, would have had her staring in wonder. It was a big room, with a high ceiling and a platform to Katty's left that bands had probably played on during the prohibition. It was warm due to the body heat, and there were sleeping bags and cots, at least fifty or sixty, pushed up along one wall. Most of the people looked to be in their thirties but some who were older and some a lot younger- Katty saw a little boy, probably about six, holding the hand of his grim faced father. Heads began to turn in Katty's direction- she did her best to make eye contact and smiled at a few people as she followed Barbara.

"Do I need to go up there with you?" she asked, and Barbara gave a terse shake of her head.

"No."

Katty gave a quick nod and stepped away from the older woman and her wheelchair, into the crowd. A few people gave her strange looks as she craned her neck, looking for Caroline- but she didn't see her and kept moving through the crowd until she had a view of the platform; Barbara was rolling up a makeshift ramp. It was a weird thing, to be surrounded by people again. Even at the hospital contact was limited and now bodies were pressing into her on all sides and she normally disliked being touched but this was so comforting, the dirty and sweaty smell, the rustling of thick fabrics, the occasional cough and mutter. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and waited as Barbara leaned out of her chair to grab the microphone lying at the edge of the platform.

"Two months ago," Barbara said in her no-nonsense voice, "a terrorist came to our city spewing promises of liberation and justice, and all we've seen is violence and blood and horror. Most of you are here because, two months ago, Kathryn Sherman knocked on your doors, and she has paid for that by being taken prisoner by Bane. Maybe he thought the fight would end with her capture, maybe he thought she'd be a warning to the rest of us. Either way, he was wrong. She's with us again and will be helping as much as she can- as Bane's captive, she has valuable information that was not available to us before. Now, I believe there are four raiding parties scheduled to leave. Those of you who are part of the parties- you know the drill. Listen to your captains, watch each other's backs, and stay sharp." Her eyes were very hard. "This is why we're here, folks. To chip away at them, a little at a time. Good luck."

And about forty people began to make their way to the little door- as the crowd cleared slightly Katty could see to the back of the room, where there were tables loaded with different weaponry, and she caught sight of Caroline and the Joker near the back of the crowd. She tried to catch Caroline's eye but the redhead was saying something to one of the people in the raiding group as she handed him a complicated machine gun that Katty couldn't even dream of operating right- the Joker was watching her, a twisted smile on his lips, his dark eyes glinting with something that made Katty very uncomfortable.

"We have food to distribute," Barbara continued once the room had emptied of the men and women going hunting, "as well as clothes and medication. There is also a sheet going around and if you have power, please put your name, the square footage of your residence, and the number of people currently living there. More people are losing power and we need everyone to stay warm."

Katty started at that and looked back at Barbara; the older woman met her eye and Katty couldn't really tell, but it looked like she smiled. Katty had started that, collecting food and clothes and medicine, because she'd known very early on that that most important thing was for her to keep her people safe. Apparently the idea had been a good one, if Barbara Gordon approved of it.

"There are a few other-"

"-wait a second," came a voice from the crowd and Barbara frowned, eyes flashing to the source of the voice. "Sherman's here? After she's been with Bane for two months? Why do you think she hasn't turned?"

Katty felt her blood run cold and tried to make herself as small as possible, but no one seemed to be looking at her, and Barbara kept her eyes on the man who'd spoken.

"I spoke with her fairly extensively before allowing her to come back," said Barbara, her voice hard and careful. "I believe she wants to help however she can."

_I do_, Katty wanted to scream.

There were a few moments of quiet and then the man said, "Alright, then," and that was the end of it. That spoke volumes to Katty, both of the people and of Barbara- her word was enough for them and it didn't make sense at all that they needed her, Katty, when they had a person like Barbara Gordon.

Barbara continued for a few more minutes, talking about different groups, different people and places outside the army that needed aid, about food and clothes that were mysteriously appearing in places that Bane's people didn't know about, and as Katty listened, she looked around the room, examining the faces of the people in the army, hard and angular and bitter and so brave.

Bane had made quite a few mistakes, she thought, but the biggest of them was that he had underestimated Gotham. He knew nothing of these people, of their stories; they were nothing but collateral to him and it was impossible for collateral to be an equal, to be a threat. These people, though- they refused to accept the role fate or Bane or whoever had handed to them, they refused to be collateral and they refused to simply accept it; they were inspiring and beautiful and Katty felt a fierce pride burn through her at the sight of them.

Barbara had finished speaking and was rolling down the ramp when she met Katty's eye and gave her a nod that Katty returned and then she turned back into the crowd, looking for Caroline.

One of the first people who'd decided to join, a woman in her forties with smooth dark skin and two sons in the army, was pushing through the crowd to Katty, a glint of joy in her eyes as she threw her arms around Katty's neck and, stunned, Katty reached up to pat her shoulders.

"God, it's good to see you," said the woman into Katty's shoulder, and Katty remembered her name- Shanya Dasheul, a teacher at one of the middle schools in central Gotham, one of the toughest women Katty'd ever met.

There were other people who were glad to see her, other hands patting her on the back and hands shaking hers and eyes burning with recognition- other words, some biting and some happy and some simply confused and Katty took them all because they were human. A few people asked if she was alright, a few more asked if she had a plan on how to kill the 'bald bastard' yet, some simply squeezed her hand, and others chatted with her like old friends.

She talked to them all, listened to them all. It was amazing, how little she'd valued human contact before, especially with this sort of human, ordinary on the outside and glittering and gleaming just beyond the eyes, burning with a fire that was almost holy. She valued every touch and every word, every smile and the tightening of eyebrows; later, when she looked back on the night, she didn't remember the words that were said but the expressions that the faces made. She remembered a Mexican woman who spoke better English than some teachers and the dimple in her left cheek; a man in his fifties with deep, grooving lines from his nose to his mouth; a mother of three with her hair in a low ponytail and a scar on her cheek.

She'd been in the crowd for about fifteen minutes when another hand came down on her shoulder, big and gentle, and she turned to see a familiar man standing behind her, and her jaw dropped as her blood ran cold.

Bane'd killed three people on the steps of the church that day, but four strangers had been pulled from the streets, and the fourth man stood before her now, his face familiar because how often had she seen it in her nightmares since that day?

"I know you," he said, quietly, and his hand fell off her shoulder. "Do you know me?"

She didn't trust herself to speak, and nodded.

"I am sorry," he said, "for what he did to you."

It was like being made whole. Katty knew it wouldn't last and she didn't care- some part of her snapped back into place and for a moment she was _whole._

"I'm sorry," she said, and her voice broke on the last word. "I'm so, so sorry-"

"-you did not pull the trigger, and you do not deserve to be punished for the actions of another. This is what Bane wanted, to punish you, to break you. Do not let him."

He gave her hand a squeeze and disappeared into the crowd before Katty could ask what his name was. She stood very still for what felt like a long time, staring after him, tears welling in her eyes and her heart swelling with an emotion that had no name and she might have stayed there forever had Caroline's voice not sounded behind her.

"Making friends?"

"Always," Katty answered automatically and turned to see her friend; the Joker was at Caroline's side, slouched over so that they were almost the same height, those scars tightened in his dark smile. The hair on the back of Katty's neck raised instinctually and her hand twitched yet again toward her gun but she stopped herself. People were giving the Joker a wide berth and no one seemed to want to look at him for too long, and Caroline was standing so close to him that their bodies were almost touching.

"You should be getting back," said Caroline, her smooth voice sliding easily over the words. "Don't want your bald friend to suspect we're up to anything, do you?"

"Definitely not," said Katty, hoping her voice didn't reveal the trepidation she felt; she wanted to stay here, with these people, warm and fighting and brave, she wanted to be submerged in the crush of humanity, she did not want to face that dark apartment, the monster it held, and the words she'd spat at him.

_Idiot_, she thought at herself, but she let Caroline and the Joker lead her back through the crowd.

"You're leaving?" asked a young man with dark eyes and darker hair, with a gun over his back and frayed gloves on his hands. "Already?"

"I have to," Katty said, and then regret did color her voice. "If Bane finds out what I'm doing, I'm no good to anyone."

"Will you be back?"

She gave a nod and something warm filled her as she realized that these people actually wanted her here. "As often as I can. Stay safe."

He grinned at her, his teeth startlingly white in his dark face and she grinned back at him reflexively. "You, too. Don't let the bad man bring you down."

And then one of his friends came up to him and they started talking about a food drop and Katty, still grinning, followed her friend and the Joker through the door and Back into Barbara Gordon's base of operations. The older woman was waiting for them sitting in her chair facing the door, her hands folded in her lap. The door closed behind Katty and the comforting sound of humanity was replaced by a silence broken only by the soft mechanical whirring of the technology at Barbara Gordon's back.

"I'm sure you want to stay," said Barbara, "but you're no use to us if Bane catches onto you."

"Yeah," said Katty, forcing the sadness out of her voice. "I know."

Barbara regarded her for a few seconds. "You were good, out there," she said finally, her voice only a little bit grudging. "Talking to people. Letting them know you're still fighting. That's good."

Katty could think of nothing to say and just nodded.

"Well," said Barbara, not unkindly. "We'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," repeated Katty.

"I'll make sure you don't get lost on the way out," said Caroline, grinning, and Katty grinned back at her and for a second it was just the two of them, grinning glinting kids.

"Good_bye_, little king," said the Joker, and this his voice lifted in a high, cackling laugh and he clapped his hands together, just once. Caroline laughed too and the spell was broken; her laugh was his laugh and for a second they blended, and the Caroline took Katty's hand and led her to the stairs.

Katty had no choice but to follow.

"So," she said once they'd reached the end of the stairs and stood in the empty, echoing warehouse, doing her best to keep her voice nonchalant, "you and the Joker sure seem friendly."

"We've been together for about a month and a half."

"Please tell me you don't mean like, together together-"

Caroline shot her a withering look. "Of course not, can you see something like him in a relationship? I mean we've been a team."

"A team," Katty repeated, carefully. "How does that work? I mean, you're the Psych major, you know he's psychopathic-"

"He is," agreed Caroline. "He's also a genius. Once he gets going, it's… it's incredible and terrifying, Katty, he starts muttering and laughing and throwing around numbers and riddles and I'm pretty sure he speaks about six different languages, and he hates plan but they pour out of him, genius plans. I've never seen anything like it. He's not… he's not _human."_

"Are you okay?" Katty asked, quietly. There was a look in Caroline's eyes, something distant and old and very bright, that gave her worry. Caroline looked up at Katty and smiled and the thing in her eyes was gone.

" 'Okay' is a loaded phrase now, though, isn't it?"

Katty laughed. "Got that right. I have another question- why is he doing this? Helping, I mean."

And Caroline's face suddenly became very guarded. "For fun," she said flatly, and Katty knew that there was more to it. "He liked Gotham how it was, before the Dent Act, before the Batman disappeared. He doesn't like Bane or what's he's done, he thinks he's going about it all wrong. It's like he's personally offended by it."

"Okay," said Katty slowly, wanting very much to press, but knowing that whatever secrets her friend was carrying for the clown, they would have to come out on their own time. "That makes sense. Kind of. If you're crazy."

Caroline laughed, and Katty was relieved that, this time, the laugh was hers.

"What about you?" the redhead asked, once the laughter had faded from her lips. They stood by the entrance back into the alley, Caroline's arms crossed over her chest, Katty's deep in the pockets of her coat. "How you holding up?"

"I'm holding," said Katty, simply. "I'm alive and I'm functioning."

"Baby steps." Caroline's voice was cheerful and Katty grinned.

"Gotta start somewhere."

The two girls hugged each other and Katty held onto her friend tightly, not wanting to let go, knowing she had to.

And she did.

The streets were colder and the snow had started, the beautiful stars hidden by the clouds and the white flakes. Katty zipped her jacket up and shoved her cold hands back into the pockets as her breath formed a white cloud in front of her face- and then she removed one hand and pulled the tablet out of her pocket. She pressed the button and the password screen popped up. She typed in the six letter password and then a new banner appeared.

**You are moving. Resume actual location Y/N**

She pressed the 'Y' and the dot started to move slowly as she walked.

"Cool."

She put the tablet back in her pocket and then her now red hands back into the pockets of her jacket and then, as she walked in the dark, beside broken cars and unlit streetlights and empty stores, she let herself think of Bane.

It'd been lurking under her skin all night, Bane and the thoughts of him and how he'd felt, warm and pressed again her-

A warm shiver shot down her spine and into her stomach and she rolled her eyes, because what else could she do? There was something there, something dark and physical and something more than physical, something that lingered when his eyes darkened over his mask, when his fingers brushed over her skin. Katty wasn't exactly the most experienced of people but she wasn't a nun, either, and she knew enough about humans to know when they craved for each other.

"Jesus," she muttered to herself, kicking at the thin layer of snow as she turned onto the street where the building was. "I do _not _want him."

A laugh sounded in her head and it sounded like the Joker's, high and cold and cruel and she sighed because there were entirely too many people taking residence in her head.

The apartment building was pitch black and ice cold and katty stared around in dismay, arranging her jacket so that the lump of the tablet in her pocket was invisible. There were a few guards shivering in the lobby and one of them pointed wordlessly at the stairs when Katty shot him a questioning glance.

"Fuck," said Katty, louder than she'd meant to, and her voice reverberated around the wide space.

Her teeth chattered as she climbed stair after stair, up twenty flights, grumbling unhappily to herself the whole time. The power had finally given out as she'd known for weeks it would; she wondered if Bane would insist that they sleep together again and rolled her eyes, swearing particularly vigorously and panting a little as she passed the fifteenth floor.

"Asshat," she muttered to herself as she shoved into the dark apartment.

The snow was falling outside the massive windows and Bane was nowhere to be seen; Katty went straight to her room and almost tripped over the massive pile of folded blankets left neatly in her doorway. She frowned down at them for probably a full thirty seconds before the pieces clicked into place and she realized that Bane had left them there for her so that she wouldn't freeze to death; he hadn't come for her when she'd been attacked but he left her _blankets_.

"Fucker," she said flatly, and stepped over them.

She stripped quickly, her teeth chattering, and then she pulled on a long sleeved shirt and the bigger flannel one, over that, a pair of sweat pants and about three pairs of socks. She grabbed the blankets and arranged them on the bed and, when she was done, the bed stood about a foot higher than normal. Katty climbed underneath the mountain of blankets and cocooned them around herself, and, eventually, the chattering teeth and violent shivers eased as her body temperature warmed the bed around her.

With adrenaline and ideas and forgiveness still flowing through her veins, she slid into sleep.

000

The power was back on in the morning and Katty was making an extremely hot cup of coffee and humming to herself (she was filled with a manic sense of glee that she knew would be inevitably followed by a dark spell but she planned to enjoy it while it lasted) when Bane emerged from his room, the collar of his coat turned up against his neck, and Katty thought the shadows under his eyes looked especially dark and she focused on that because she didn't want to notice the other things, the slope of his neck under the mask, his big hands or the way he looked at her, dark and strange and unreadable.

_I'm fighting you_, she thought at him. _I'm helping._

But she said nothing. The tension between them was palpable and she remembered suddenly how his body had felt, pressed heavily against hers when he'd pinned her to the table, warm and solid and breathing and so alive, how his eyes had glinted.

She might have been surprised to know that he was thinking the same thing.

"Thanks for the blankets," she said, suddenly. And then, before she could stop herself- "didn't know you cared."

Your heartrate rose significantly last night."

"Mugger," she said, carelessly. "Ran off when I started to fight back."

A nod. "And did you find what you were looking for?" His voice curved cruelly over the last word and she forced herself to stay calm.

"On my walk?"

Another nod; the unblinking stare continued.

"If I was looking for a shell of my city and starving people, then yes, happy hunting to me."

"Your city." There was a note of amusement under the rumbling growl of his voice. "And why is it _your_ city?"

"It just is. It's home. And you've done your best to destroy it, so, thanks-"

"Not destroy, dear. Renew."

"Renew," she said, quietly, staring down at the mug in her hands. "How, exactly? By bathing it in blood?"

"Yes."

"That's sick," she said, softly, her hand clutching tightly the mug in her hand. "There are people who love this place-"

"There are people who love rabid dogs, too. Should the animals not be put down?"

"Gotham isn't a rabid dog, Gotham is a city, filled with millions of different lives and stories that you haven't bothered to listen to-"

"And you have."

She stared at him. "Of course I have."

"Has Gotham listened to your story, little hero?"

"Gotham_ is_ my story," she said, very quietly. His eyes were burning.

"And what are you, to a thing like Gotham?"

"Whatever it needs me to be."

He chuckled, then, and it wrapped around her like thunder made into velvet. "The city needs you to be a sacrifice, Kathryn. Nothing more."

Barbara Gordon's words his her again and she wondered who would be right, Bane or Barbara. "Then I'll _be _a sacrifice-"

"Why?" His voice rose over hers. "Why give yourself to a crippled city when you could be so much more-"

"More? What more can I be, than twelve million lives? How does someone become more than that, Bane, you will never understand- if the city needs me to be a sacrifice then that's what I am because if the trade is me for twelve thousand people- that's not a trade that's a damn gift-"

"But you could be so much more," he said, the mechanical voice dropping into a low growl. "Much more than a sacrifice, much more than a hero-"

She shook her head. "You're wrong."

"I'm not. You _are _more, my dear."

"More than what?"

His eyes were dark and burning under furrowed brows but there was truth in them, too, a hard and angular sort of truth, and curiosity, a flash of something that might have been longing-

"You are more than the martyr this city has begged you to become."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Woman King" by Iron&Wine

A/N: THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN REVISED

I hope this version is better; I personally like it way more and feel more comfortable with the characterizations/plot. I hope you guys are happier with this version too! It seems to fit waaay better to me, everyone is a loads more in character, and the style is more my normal. About Barbara Gordon- I know in the canon of the comics she is Jim Gordon's daughter, not sister, and i know how she came to be crippled. BUT. This particular story is based off of the canon Christopher Nolan created, and some characters and relationships are significantly different in that universe. As such, I took artistic license to make Barbara Jim's sister. As to how she ended up in the wheelchair, that will be discussed in the upcoming chapter.

I was off my game the first time around and I apologize for that, but hey, it's part of life. Thanks to those of you who stuck with me!


	21. One Bad Day

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_I'm waking up to ash and dust_  
_I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust_  
_I'm breathing in the chemicals_

_I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus_  
_This is it, the apocalypse_

_I raise my flags, don my clothes_  
_It's a revolution, I suppose_  
_We're painted red to fit right in_

**Chapter Twenty-one: One Bad Day**

Snow crunched under her boots and she squinted against the bright glare of gray light that reflected on the layer of snow covering the abandoned street and the cars parked next to the sidewalk. The gleeful mania lingered and her mind was buzzing and felt all golden and red and glittery in a way that it hadn't for a very long time, though Bane's digs nestled under the gleaming colors and those felt different, gray and dark blue and a bit nauseous.

_Martyr_._ Hero_. _Leader_. _Sacrifice_.

Four words that had been applied to her in the past twenty-four hours and she'd chosen none of them for herself, she thought as she kicked at the snow, sending the glistening flakes into the air. Weird didn't begin to cover it, being twenty and having words like that tacked onto you. She wouldn't have called herself any of those things (except for leader, on certain days) although she'd had fantasies, back when normal didn't mean coffee with Bane, about saving classmates and pedestrians from bombers and armed gunmen.

She snorted at the remembrance and clicked at another clump of snow, and that time she thought of how she'd paint the glitter and sparkle of those flakes as they scattered into the winds that wound along the sidewalk.

The words were stuck to her, though, and though she hadn't chosen them, they'd chosen her and maybe she was better for it. It was weird and baffling but it was _cool_, too, in some ways, most of them naïve, to know she held a measure of sway, no matter how small, over humanity. She had no idea how it would end and knew she'd hyperventilate if she thought about it for too long, so she shoved the thoughts of endings to the same place where Bane's words and the way the Joker looked at Caroline rested and she focused on the snow, instead.

John Blake was waiting, tall and lean and handsome, and she felt a surge of excitement as their eyes met and he pushed off the wall, meeting her as she walked up to him and together they walked down the alley to their normal meeting place, next to old fire escapes and over-flowing trashcans, out of sight.

"I have," said Katty, unable to help the grin that spread over her face, "a _lot _of news."

His dark brows lifted and his eyes twitched. "Please, don't keep it to yourself."

And it all came spilling out of her, her voice strong but her hands shaking as she tried to consolidate it all in her mind as she told John Blake of the things that Gotham had become- Ezra and the pills and the Joker and Caroline and the terrifying, impossible thing between them- Barbara Gordon and the room full of secrets, the army, the raiding parties, piles of guns and food and people who were brave and crazy enough to fight, and she realized at some point that it might not be a good idea to tell him all of this so easily, because she knew next to nothing about John Blake, really, but she trusted him and she trusted Barbara Gordon and that trust filled the gash that Bane had left in her and now it was overflowing.

John Blake's face changed as she spoke and she watched it; his eyes narrowed and then widened and then his jaw dropped and she spoke through all of it, the words pouring out of her like they couldn't become real fast enough.

"So," she said, somewhat lamely, when the words had finished, "what do you think?"

He wasn't generally a particularly expressive man but he was staring at her now in complete astonishment, his dark eyes wide and his mouth open. Katty, already apprehensive under the other emotions, became even more so as she wondered if she'd managed to fuck everything up even more spectacularly and she was just beginning to tip into panic when John spoke.

"That sounds- did you say Barbara _Gordon_? The commissioner's sister?"

"Yeah," said Katty with a nod, and John's eyebrows shot upward in a way that was almost comical and Katty had to fight back the urge to laugh.

"Damn," said John, softly, still looking stunned. "This is… well, unexpected is the best word I can think of right now."

"Believe me, I feel you."

"And she wants to talk with me?"

"Since I only know a bit of the plan, yeah. I told her we'd be there by ten, I need to go to the hospital and take care of a few things but it shouldn't take long-"

"-what time is it now?"

"Uh- about eight thirty."

"And how far is their HQ from here?"

"About ten minutes, normally, but we'll need to take the alleys and back ways so we aren't seen."

"Right, yeah. Can you be back in forty five minutes?"

"Absolutely," said Katty, nodding, and John Blake nodded too, his thin lips twisting upwards into a smile.

"Good. We'll meet back here, then. And, Katty?"

"Yeah?"

He grinned at her.

"We're going to win this."

000

She went down to the basement, first, to Ezra and the medicine that it all came down to and saw the older man already at work.

"Ezra," she called, stepping carefully around crates of chemicals, and he turned from the lab table, looking up at her from underneath the goggles. "Listen, something came up, I have to go do something- is everything going alright, here? Do you need anything before I go?"

He gave her a gentle smile and shook his head. "No. Everything is proceeding as it should."

"Good," she said, nodding, glancing over his shoulder at the powers and liquids and tubes. "This is… you're a godsend."

"I know," he said, his voice mild and his eyes glinting with good humor, and Katty stared at him for a solid three seconds before bursting into a laughter  
that he joined.

"You're in good humor," he said, when the laughs had faded from both of their faces, and Katty's grin widened.

"So are you," she said easily. "I'll see you tomorrow, alright?"

"Very well. Good luck with your undertaking."

"Yours, too."

She went up to find Langer next, and he was in one of the labs cleaning supplies when she finally found him, his shoulders hunched and his posture oddly tight, and he glanced up at her and gave her his customary nod of a greeting.

"Hey," she said, leaning on the table next to him, "I came to tell you I won't be here today, there's something I gotta take care of- but it's important that everyone thinks I'm in the basement with Ezra-"

"-going off to fight the war?" Langer asked with a kind of easiness that only thinly masked the anger underneath it, and Katty started. Langer's face was hard and he wasn't looking at her, eyes still trained on the instrument he was cleaning.

"What do-"

He put down the iodine and the scalpel and he looked at her, then, his eyes burning and she suddenly felt like a scolded child, much smaller than herself and extremely powerless. "I know, Katty," he said shortly, his eyebrows lifting over his hard eyes. "I know about the rebellion, I know you were there last night."

"How-"

"-because my husband was, too. Fighting a war that'll only get him killed, and he saw you. That was the point, though, wasn't it? Rally the troops, get them ready for the slaughter?"

She felt like she was falling away from her own head and she stared at him, caught completely off guard, numbness settling around her skin. "We're just fighting back-" her voice was stunned and surprised and weak and she hated how young she sounded but the words were out, now, and couldn't be taken back. "We're just trying to take back the city-"

" 'Just'," said Langer, his voice hard. "There is no _just _about this, Katty. It's war you're trying to wage, a full scale war against one of the most accomplished terrorists the world has ever known, and it's like you don't even expect any consequences."

"I know there are going to be consequences and- I thought you… were _for _that. You were the one who told me I was an example because I fought back-"

"-it's one thing to be an example when you're a prisoner of the terrorist you tried to fight, it's completely different to still try and do the thing that made you a prisoner in the first place."

"But…" and this was the thing that had never made sense to her, the fact that there was even a discussion about it, "someone _has _to, we can't just lie down and let him do this to us-"

Langer pounded his fist down on the counter and she jerked backwards, eyes widening as her heart skipped a beat; it was not a pleasant feeling. "He killed three people because you went to _church_, Katty, and now you're doing this? How many will die when something goes wrong this time, hm? People's kids and spouses and parents, and you want that blood on your hands? I told you to be smart, to be careful-"

"-someone has to fight!" she snapped at him, her voice loud and messy and shaking, and his eyes flashed. "People are going to die, that's what happens, but someone has to fight back-"

"Yeah, they do. But it doesn't have to be you, it shouldn't be you, because aside from the fact that you're only twenty, anything you do will make Bane a thousand times angrier than if anyone else had done the exact same thing. Whoever brought you back into this is an idiot."

She felt stung and hurt and embarrassed and angry but she knew there was truth to what he said, too, and she forced it down, that truth, out of the way.

"You're only twenty years old," said Langer again, and his voice was softer then even though his eyes were still narrowed. "You forget that, Katty, we all do, but you're just a kid-"

"-I'm not," she said sharply, thinking of Bane and his eyes and the fire he lit under her skin; of blood and snow and guns in shaking hands. "I'm young, but I'm not a kid."

His face was pitying. "You'll see, one day. Listen, I'm not- this is hard to hear, I know it is. But sometimes you have to keep your nose down and just… hope."

He was right, she knew that. About a lot of things, maybe about all of it, but in this world, now, in what Gotham had turned into, right didn't really matter. Or, more accurately, it did matter but there were different levels of it and while it was right to keep her nose down, it was a different kind of right to keep fighting.

Sacrifice, Barbara Gordon had told her. Maybe this was what she meant, or part of it anyway.

"I'm sorry," said Katty, her voice quiet but hard at the same time. "It has to be done."

Langer's eyes darkened. "All right, then. I just hope you know what it means."

000

John Blake was waiting for her, his hands in his pockets and his eyes gleaming, and it was easy to not think about Langer and his warnings, though she still felt a little stunned and sick to her stomach.

"Ready?" he asked, and she nodded.

They started to walk. Katty led the way, careful to stick to alleys and the backs of buildings, and there was something exhilarating in it, clearing the corners with a cop, having someone to watch her back and someone whose back she was responsible for, and they didn't talk, being too focused on not being caught, while Katty tried not to think about all the ways Tom Langer was right.

There were less people on the streets these days, but Bane's mercenaries still patrolled and there were the tanks and the three trucks, one of which held the bomb that would damn them all, and so they were careful and quiet.

They reached the old speakeasy before long and they darted into the warehouse level, both breathing twin sighs of relief as the door closed behind them; Katty pulled out the tablet to make sure her tracker still put her at the hospital. It did.

"Down the stairs," she said to John, gesturing loosely at the door across the massive empty space as she put the tablet back into her pocket.

Barbara Gordon was waiting for them in the darkened room, and she straightened and turned to face them when they reached the bottom of the stairs, giving Katty a nod that wasn't exactly unkind before sticking her hand out to John Blake.

"Barbara Gordon," she said shortly. "I hear you have a plan."

"I do," he said, his voice smooth but careful and firm, too, and Katty watched the both of them. "But I have some questions I'd like to ask before I give away any details."

Barbara's nod was terse. "Of course. Whatever I'm at liberty to tell, I will."

John asked the same questions Katty had, though he worded them much better and Barbara seemed a bit more receptive to them, and Katty didn't really blame her for that. She answered patiently, looking at John as though she wasn't quite sure where he fit into the puzzle she'd constructed around herself.

"Alright," said Barbara, a few minutes later. "Tell me about this plan of yours."

"I'm not done yet," said John, and his voice was much harder that time, his arms crossed over his chest. Katty glanced up at him and she saw Barbara's brows furrow over her glasses. "The Joker."

Barbara's eyes tightened. "Yes. What about him?"

"Are you outta your damn mind?"

Katty raised her eyebrows and looked away, very much hoping that this was one she could stay out of.

"Not exactly," said Barbara coolly. "He wasn't my first choice, trust me."

"Why the hell didn't you shoot him on sight?"

"Because we need him, Detective Blake," she snapped, her eyes flashing and her fingers drumming a quick pattern on the arms of her chair.

John snorted, his dark brows pulled tight across his forehead. "Right. You need the psychopath who almost destroyed Gotham eight years ago. I'm sure he's been a great help."

Barbara's eyes narrowed even further and she crossed her arms over her chest, leaning back in her chair, regarding John Blake very coolly; Katty looked between them, torn between amusement and relief that she was not on the receiving end of that gaze.

"Have you ever been in a war, John Blake?" Barbara asked finally, her voice quiet and very hard, and something in John's face went flat.

"I'm in one now, Ms. Gordon."

"Then you should know," said Barbara, even more quietly, and her voice sent chills up Katty's spine as she got that feeling, again, that Barbara Gordon was bursting with stories that were better left untold, "that war calls for incredibly distasteful things."

"Like murderous psychopaths?"

Her eyes were like ice. "Exactly like that. You're right, Detective Blake. This is a war, and we are losing. We are probably going to keep losing, and we need to resort to some less than savory people to do some less than savory things if we have any hope of turning this around."

"And you know this because you've fought so many wars." John's voice was soft and Katty's eyes flashed to him, thinking he was making a mistake; there was something about Barbara, a hard magnetism, that made it difficult for Katty to doubt her and she could see it working on John Blake, too, in the grinding of his jaw and the burning of his eyes.

"I know it because for ten years, I was that person." Barbara's voice was soft and her brown eyes were gleaming and she saw John Blake recoil slightly, his eyes widening, and Katty felt something expanding between the three of them, a dark secret about Barbara Gordon and what she was capable of. "I was the one they called to get my hands dirty when the bureaucrats started getting cold feet."

"You were a hit man," John said, and it wasn't a question. Barbara's lips twitched and her eyes didn't change.

"I was a sniper," she clarified, and Katty felt like she was falling, suddenly, and there was another emotion there too, a bond; two women with blood on their hands, two women who might be drowning in it. "Mostly."

"For the CIA?" Katty asked, and the stare Barbara fixed her in then was something that would haunt Katty for a very long time.

"I didn't work for the CIA until after I was shot through the spine."

Katty sucked air in through gritted teeth in a way that wasn't entirely voluntary, but there was nothing in Barbara that inspired pity. She didn't seem lacking for being in a chair; she seemed to be a different type of whole.

"Who did you work for first?"

Her eyes flashed to Blake.

"If I told you that," she said, mildly, "I would have an accident one day, and there would be a grave and a body that wasn't mine."

"Holy shit," said Katty before she could stop herself, and Barbara's lips twitched.

"So," said John Blake; Barbara Gordon's past had a strange feel to it, and Katty was torn between wanting to know more and being very glad to leave it behind. "You trust the Joker?"

"Absolutely not," replied Barbara, her brow furrowing. "But we can use him."

John looked at her for what seemed like a long time, his jaw working and his eyes dark, before giving a terse nod and then his eyes flashed to Katty.

"What about you?" he asked. "What do you think?"

"About the Joker?" How strange, that her opinion mattered to him, how strange that she even had an opinion about whether a psychotic clown could be a reliable weapon against the terrorist who held her captive. He nodded, brow furrowed.

"We don't have much choice," she said, quietly. "And some things Caroline said makes me think he has a reason to want Bane brought down."

"A reason?" John's voice was thick with doubt. "What kind of reason could a person like him have?"

Katty gave a wide shrug. "I have no idea. No one even knows what his name is, do they?"

"Not according to what the Commissioner says," said Blake, shaking his head. "But would you vouch for him?"

"Be responsible for him? Definitely not."

"No- do you think it's worth it? To trust him with this?"

Katty exchanged a glance with Barbara; the older woman's face was hard to read and Katty felt like the three of them were perched right on the edge of a knife.

"We can use him," Katty said, slowly. "I think we'd be stupid to not take advantage of that."

John Blake fixed her in that dark glare for a few seconds and then he nodded. "Alright. Then we'll keep him on."

"I believe you have a plan to share, Detective Blake," said Barbara Gordon, and John smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "I do."

John Blake, though, was a cop and a detective. He was not a strategist and Katty could see Barbara's skepticism growing by the minute as John explained the plan that he and Jim Gordon had come up with.

"Bane's men are stationed primarily in two places- the apartment complex on fifth where he's living now, and City Hall. There are a few other minor places scattered around the city, mainly in other upscale high rises. But the rise on fifth and City Hall is where over three-fourths of the liberation are stationed, so we want to his those targets first. There are three trucks, two decoys. There are teams that have mapped out the three routes. When we attack the teams will take the trucks, find the bomb and get it hooked back up to the reactor so it won't blow if Bane tips off the triggerman. Then, once the bomb is en route back to the reactor, we signal the teams to take City Hall and the apartment building. Katty is working on drugs that will knock out the mercenaries, they take antibiotics every morning at eight. We'll strike the trucks at seven thirty and then hit City Hall and Fifth."

Barbara looked at him and waited, and Katty looked between the two of them, waiting for John to continue or Barbara to speak.

"That's a good plan," said Barbara, her voice mild and her eyes very cold. "Of course, a few details are missing. How many targets, exactly, are stationed at each building?"

Katty and Blake exchanged a glance.

"Um, I don't know, exactly," said Blake, his brow furrowing. "About a hundred? Two hundred?"

"Hm," said Barbara, her eyes narrowing as ice flowed off of her. "How many exits in each building?"

Neither of them said anything and they avoided each other's eyes. Barbara leaned forward, her chair creaking slightly.

"How many floors?"

Silence.

"What happens if the trigger is pushed? Will the reactor stop the bomb from exploding?"

"Yes," said John Blake, immediately, his angular face opening in a sort of relief that this, at least, he could answer. "It will. The reactor completely unarms the core and it's just a power source again. If we can reconnect it, the bomb is in no danger of going off."

"So it has to be secured before we attack."

"On route, at the very least."

"Do you have any idea who has the trigger?"

Katty's fist clenched in her lap, because she had more than an idea and she still couldn't speak. She would bet a hell of a lot of money that Talia al Ghul held the trigger, but she couldn't tell John or Barbara about it even though she knew full well it could throw the whole damn thing off- Talia was the one thing that could be traced directly back to her, and if it all went wrong, if Bane found out the role she'd played, a lot of people would die.

John Blake shook his head and Katty kept her mouth shut. "No."

Barbara was quiet for a few minutes and looked between the two of them, her eyes unreadable and her mouth set in a thin line.

"Do you have any idea how many people you would have gotten killed if I hadn't gotten involved?" she asked the two of them, her voice quiet and very hard. John Blake's jaw clenched and Katty felt her stomach drop because Barbara was right. "Do you have any idea what could have happened to this city if you had gone through with this?

John's eyes flashed and his brows furrowed. "Listen, lady, I might not be some super spy but I am a cop, and I've been working with your brother on this-"

Barbara laughed and there was some kindness in it, a certain sort of fondness, hidden underneath a much harder layer.

"I love my brother, Detective Blake, but a frontal attack on a terrorist contingent is my specialty, not his. I want the two of you to listen to me very carefully, now. We have one shot at this. If it goes wrong- and it very likely will go wrong- then Bane will blow the city to hell. If he finds some mercy in his heart- unlikely- then hundreds if not thousands of people will _still _die. We have four days to make this thing as tight as a fucking vacuum seal- any less, and the whole thing is off. Do both of you understand?"

They both nodded and Barbara looked between the two of them, her brown gaze measuring.

"Alright," she said, her voice lifting as she leaned back in the chair. "Let's go to work."

And they did.

000

It wasn't like Katty thought it would be; there were less impressive speeches and a hell of a lot more hacking into city blueprints, making lists, and having Barbara grill her, over and over and over, about the exact placements of mercenaries within the building.

"I've told you," said Katty, running her hands through her hair so that the shorter layers stood on end. "I haven't been counting, I can only guess-"

"Guesses aren't good enough," said Barbara flatly. "Tomorrow, I need an exact headcount. Got it?"

"Yes ma'am," said Katty, dully, and John Blake's lips twitched.

A more developed plan began to take form over the next two days. Every time Katty and John came back, they came back with more intel, and it was like doing a painting, Katty thought; you start with the most basic bits and then there's an outlines, then details and then there are things that you never even planned on that made the whole thing about a hundred times better, and she lay in her bed after the second day of planning- three days to go- and thought that they stood a chance.

Her stomach leapt and she clenched at the bed sheets, her mind buzzing with thoughts of going home, of being free of Bane-

-who hadn't spoken to her since he'd called her a martyr. He wasn't avoiding her, not really, but he wasn't speaking to her, either, and they never seemed to be in one room together for very long. She liked it. She could breathe, despite the constant almost-panic that wrapped around her at the thought of everything they had planned.

It was the third day- two days until the attack- that the plan was finalized. There were exact numbers and blueprints and teams assigned to specific tasks and Katty sat with Barbara and John, going painstakingly over every single detail and hundreds of sheets of paper, organizing and categorizing and preparing.

There were select people out of the army that were assigned to specific tasks. The plan was split into a three-pronged attack- one to take the bomb back to the reactor, one assault on the apartment building where Bane and Katty lived, and another assault on city hall. The mercenaries would be incapacitated by the drugs, so, if everything went as it should, taking back the city should not be exceedingly difficult.

And that made Katty nervous. It was too easy, it had all been too easy; the drugs and Ezra and the army and Barbara Gordon and now the actual plan, falling into place like it had. It was too easy and she did not trust it.

Blake and Katty would both be leading contingents- Katty in a mask because, as Barbara said, there was a chance it could go wrong and if it went _really _wrong, Katty was on strict orders to bail because, according to Barbara, her involvement would make Bane about ten times more lethal- and Barbara was grilling them, again and again and again, over their roles.

Blake was leading the team who would recapture and return the bomb; the truck's route was marked and it was simply a matter of getting the bomb. The mercs in the car took their pills on a different schedule, but Barbara was not unduly worried and Blake's team over powering them-

"-as long as you follow this to the fucking letter," she told Blake, pointing at a piece of paper with a hastily scribbled flow chart. Blake nodded, his handsome face drawn tight.

"Katty," said Barbara, turning her chair to face Katty. "Run it past me again."

Katty ran her hands through her hair for about the fifth time in the past ten minutes- even the longer bits were now pointing in strange angles all around her face, giving her the look of an underfed and rather demented lion.

It was too easy, she thought as she recited the plan. From fourth avenue to fifth and from there to the building- cut down any guards still standing, move the rest of them into the middle of the building, secure the exits, take the guns. Wait for Bane.

It was too easy.

"Now, said Barbara, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. "The third commander. It's going to be a team- Caroline and the Joker."

Katty's head shot up and she stared at Barbara, her brow furrowing, and Blake looked like someone had shone a very bright light in his eyes.

"The Joker?" he asked, loudly. "Are you serious?"

"Very," said Barbara. "He and Caroline have headed missions before. They're effective and deadly, and people know not to fuck with them. That's why they're going to lead the assault on City Hall. That's where we'll need to make the biggest impression in case anyone actually within the city is on Bane's side- they take the building, secure the mercenaries, and every news station in America will be fixed on them. Every single person in Gotham will know what's happening, and no one wants to fuck with the Joker, or Caroline."

"Gotham hates him," said Blake coldly, and Barbara lifted an eyebrow.

"Do they? He's been fighting with us for some time, Detective Blake."

"I know," Blake said, leaning forward. "And that is about three fucking fourths of what bothers me, Barbara. The man terrorized this city eight years ago and laughed the whole time, so why the hell is he fighting with us? _For_ us? It makes no damn sense."

"I don't give a damn what his reasons are."

"That might be a mistake," said Katty, quietly, and Barbara's eyes flashed to her. "I don't know a lot, but I do know that people aren't much more than their motivations, and if we don't know what motivates the Joker, then we have no leverage over him. We have no understanding of him."

"And you think understanding him would make a difference?"

"Yes," said Blake and Katty in unison and Barbara looked between the two of them, her face drawn and very serious, before she swiveled away from the table and rolled over the computers and her fingers started flying over the keys. About two seconds later, what looked like a database came up, and she turned back to them.

"Alright," she asked them. "What do we know about the Joker?"

"He's… kinda… tall."

"Thank you, Katty. That is incredibly helpful."

"Glad to help."

"He came out of nowhere eight years ago," said John, his brow furrowed, leaning across the table. "Commissioner Gordon told me his prints weren't in the system, nothing in his clothes… he said it was like he crawled out of something, just popped into existence."

Barbara was fixing John in a very strange look, and Katty could almost swear that she could see the wheels turning in Barbara's mind.

"Do you know who he is?" Katty asked, and Barbara turned to look at her.

"Eight years ago, and he came out of nowhere. People don't come out of nowhere unless they've got someone else to build a nowhere for them to come out of."

"… I don't follow."

"The people I used to work for," said Barbara, her eyes burning, "when we were going under deep cover, there were people who'd build those covers for us and then would erase them completely, after. And they could do more than that. If someone needed to disappear, it would be like they'd never existed. We used to tell them to 'build us a nowhere'."

A chill ran down Katty's spine but Barbara was turning away and typing furiously. John and Katty exchanged a look.

"Are you saying the Joker was in intelligence?"

"I'm saying that there's gossip even in the CIA, and after I joined I heard a story about a man named Jack Napier who was intelligence and who, for some reason, no longer existed."

There was something in her tone that prevented Katty and John from speaking again and they just watched her; she pulled up one database and then another and then the screen went black and lines and green writing shot across it and she swore quietly under her breath before the screen cleared.

And then there was a picture of a man.

Katty and John got up and stood behind Barbara, staring at the screen in disbelief.

"If he came from nowhere, how the hell did you get this?"

"It's just a picture, Blake. And even we make mistakes sometimes."

"So that's-"

"It sure as hell looks like him."

The man had a thin, angular face and light curls that fell down to his jawbone, with dark glinting eyes that might have been green or brown or black. He was handsome, despite his sharp face, and that glint in his eye was frighteningly familiar.

"That's him," said Katty, quietly. "Same bone structure, same eyes-"

"No scars," said John. "Barbara, do you think you can find out anymore?"

"Maybe," she said, cocking her head slightly. "If they buried him, they buried him for a reason, and they buried him deep. But they probably couldn't erase him completely, especially not from someone who knows _how_ they bury. You two keep running over the plan. I'll see what I can find."

Barbara couldn't find anything, and that made Katty's heart sink even further as she felt the now familiar emotion of being involved in something that was so far beyond her it may as well have been Jupiter.

There was terror wrapped around her, and guilt too, because there was the one glaring, obvious flaw in the plan; she knew Talia al Ghul held the trigger. She knew who had the power to blow them all to hell and she didn't have the guts to open her mouth because she was scared of Bane. It was convoluted, the whole thing, but there was a chance it'd go wrong and there was a chance Bane wouldn't know she'd been involved (although if it was up to her she'd have shouted it from the fucking rooftops) and if she wasn't involved then it wasn't personal, but if Talia was involved… there would be no question. Bane was smart, Bane was a genius, and he would tie Talia back to Katty in the time it took to blink.

And then they really all would be headed straight for hell.

The army gathered in the afternoon, two hours before Katty had to leave, and she and Barbara and Blake stood in front of them, telling these brave, mad people how they'd take back the city, or how they'd die in a desperate attempt at freedom.

"There will be fifty people in Kathryn's contingent, and fifty with Caroline," Barbara was saying, staring down at the mass of people, her green eyes burning, her voice hard, and Katty wondered if she'd have preferred to be leading a charge, and then she looked up to see Caroline grinning at her, and she couldn't help but grin back.

"Blake will take twenty men to retrieve the bomb and return it to the reactor." The guilt clenched at Katty's chest and she wished she had a different kind of bravery. "The rest of you will remain here as back up in case anything goes wrong- if you are not willing to fight, you need to tell me today, because shit has effectively gotten real. People have already been chosen for their specific teams, so you will meet with your team and the team leader will go over the specifics with you. Any questions?"

There was an uneasy and determined silence, and Barbara gave a nod.

"Alright. Go to work. This war won't win itself."

They gathered in the back of the big, echoing room, around a table, and Katty spread out a map of the city and a blueprint of the apartment building. She'd been over the plan enough in her head that relaying it was almost second nature, and it hadn't been a terribly complicated plan to begin with.

"The drugs are taken at eight in the morning two days from now," she said, looking around at all of them. "And the man making them estimates it'll take about ten minutes for them to take effect, which means that at eight ten, we need to be in position, surrounding the building." She pointed to it on the map. "The team will be split up into smaller cells of ten, each with a leader, to be placed around the building while you wait for my signal to move in. Each leader will have a radio, and once I give the signal, you move in. There are ten to five mercenaries stationed on each floor, and twenty floors. The mercenaries on the bottom two floors are our main priorities. We gather them in the middle of the floor and bind them- shouldn't be too difficult, because they'll be unconscious. Take any weapons you can find. While we're doing that, Caroline and the Joker-" weird, how easy the word rolled off her tongue like it was a name, "will be two blocks over at City Hall, and Blake is and his team will be reattaching the bomb to the reactor so that it won't blow."

"What about the trigger?" asked the handsome dark-skinned boy who'd talked to Katty two nights before. She stared up at him, cold guilt coursing through her, her bangs falling into her eyes, and she had to force herself into calm before she could trust herself to speak.

She opened her mouth to speak and Barbara's voice sounded at her elbow.

"Doesn't matter about the trigger," she said shortly. "The bomb hasn't decayed enough yet to actually _be_ a bomb. It'll take another two or three months, at least- if they pushed the trigger now, there'd be a blast radius of about a hundred feet. Tragic, but hardly devastating."

Katty stared down at her, relief flooding through her. "How'd you figure that out?"

"Math."

Katty made a disgusted face, mostly out of reflex. "Hate math."

"Well, it just saved your ass, so maybe you should show it some respect."

She wasn't completely sure, but it almost seemed like Barbara was joking with her. She grinned down at the older woman and Barbara's lips twitched before she looked at the people gathered around the table. Katty had a sudden feeling of déjà vu; she was reminded of school projects, back in high school (she'd almost always ended up the leader, because she was loud and smart and knew what to do even then) when the teacher would come over and check up on them. Only now there was a lot more than an English grade at stake if she led them wrong.

"Everything clear here?" Barbara asked in her hard voice, looking around at everyone. Katty looked up too, gauging the reactions in their faces, and she was glad to see that they all understood, and they all looked determined. Her eyes fell on a man towards the back, and she frowned. He looked very familiar, but she couldn't quite place his face-

He smiled at her and she had a hard time not running to him and throwing her arms around him, because it had been close to two months since she'd seen her father and she wanted nothing more than to climb up in his lap and have him read stories of adventures and bravery to her, stories with characters that were braver and smarter and stronger than she was, and a plot that would wrap itself up nicely-

But she wasn't a kid, and her father wasn't superman, and she couldn't afford to disappear into someone else's world now, so she just smiled back and waited until she could run to him. He was much thinner, his hair was almost entirely gray now, and a scraggly gray and white beard covered his chin, jaw and much of his cheeks. He looked about ten years older than his actual fifty, but she was glad to see that he still looked strong and healthy. A familiar silver cross glinted on his chest. It wasn't a twin to hers, but it was close, and, like hers, it had not left his neck in years.

Barbara left a few minutes later, going over to another clump of people and Katty's eyes followed her and then she looked at the people surrounding Caroline and the Joker, and her jaw dropped. Tom Langer's handsome husband was there and, to Katty's intense surprise, Tom Langer was, too. He met Katty's eyes and gave her a terse nod. She nodded back.

"You ready for this?" came a male voice at her back, and she turned and then looked up to see the handsome dark skinned boy grinning down at her.

"Oh, sure, who doesn't love a good threat of death?" She felt almost giddy after finding out about the trigger. He laughed and he really was a good looking boy, tall, with a chiseled face, black hair that was in short dreadlocks and eyes just a few shades darker than his skin. He looked to be about her age, maybe a little younger. "What's your name?"

"Shawn," he said, still grinning at her. He didn't give a last name and she didn't ask.

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen," he said. "You gonna tell me I'm too young to be fighting? Cause you're only two years older than me."

"No," she said, quickly. "No, I'm- I mean, I'm not glad because it's not right that you have to be fighting at all, but it's good. That you are. It's brave."

He shrugged. "It's the right thing to do. That's what you said, anyway. That first meeting. That's why I stayed."

She remembered. They met in a parking garage that first time, and there'd been about a hundred people, all cold and scared and huddled together and angry, and no one else had stepped up, and she'd been the one to bring them out anyway, so she did. She'd had no idea what she was doing but she was good at talking and she was filled with an anger that seemed written in her very blood and she'd just killed a man and could still feel her knife sliding through his neck, and her voice had risen to a shout, and it had shook, and they'd listened.

"I'm glad you did," she said now, smiling up at him, and he blinked, looking slightly taken aback.

"Yeah. Me too."

She would have kept talking to him- she missed this, flirting and talking and handsome boys who didn't have masks covering half of their faces- but then another voice called her name and it was her father's voice, and she turned and threw her arms around him, and she didn't cry like she had when she saw her mom.

"I missed you," she said, and he patted her shoulder.

"I missed you too, Katie."

"Is everyone alright?"

"Scared. Angry. But we're alive and strong, and we're alright."

"Good." They pulled back and her father kept his hand on her shoulder and she was glad for it. Ted Sherman was not a very tall man, but she was short enough that just about every man was tall, and she'd missed him.

"So," he said, his voice light. "You're leading troops into war now?"

"Hardly," she said, but she grinned. "Just kind of… gently… guiding."

"Right. Into war." His voice had gotten harder.

"Someone has to," she said, more quietly. "And they needed help."

"I know." He sounded resigned. "And if it goes right, you'll be free from Bane."

"That'll be nice," she said, and she didn't say all the things that could go wrong, instead. "I miss home."

"We miss you."

It was hard to say goodbye, but a few minutes later, after more catching up, Katty saw Caroline and the Joker, and he was talking to her, gesturing wildly, his face split into that grin, and she was laughing. Katty'd realized the night before that Caroline knew more than she was letting on about the Joker, and there were things that Katty- and John and Barbara- needed to know, if they were going to put their trust in the Joker. Or if they were at least not going to lock him up and wait for the bomb to blow.

She hugged her father and then pushed away while she could still make herself (she just wanted to be a child again but she was twenty, now, and she had a war to fight) and walked over to Caroline and her grin companion. He turned to her, his head before the rest of him, and he grinned at her, his chin tucked to his shoulder and his grin chilling.

"Little king," he said softly in greeting, and she frowned at him because she really didn't understand, and then she nodded and looked to Caroline.

"I need to talk to you. Alone."

"Alright," said her friend, and they made their way through the crowd back to the room of technology, and Katty pulled the door shut behind her, cutting off the sounds of talk and filling the room with an artificial, blue light. Caroline was looking at her, a red eyebrow raised.

"We need to talk about the Joker," said Katty flatly, and Caroline crossed her arms over her chest.

"What about him?" Caroline asked, her voice easy and Katty recognized the tone. Caroline was an easy liar, always had been, and Katty had known her long enough to know one mask from the other.

"Who was he? Before?"

"How would I know?"

"Because you've been with him for two months."

"You've been with Bane for two months. How much do you know about him?"

"You'd be surprised," said Katty, wryly, "and believe me, I'll tell you when everything's over. But we're trusting your pal out there with some serious shit, and I need to know that we're not making a mistake. I need to know what he was before."

"He was just a man, Katty."

"Yeah, well, he's something a hell of a lot less than a man now. Why is he even helping? Caroline, it just doesn't make sense and it has to make sense because I vouched for him two days ago and if he does something, that blood is on me." Her voice was shaking. "If our friendship means anything to you, you will tell me why you trust him, you will tell me who he was."

Caroline, for what felt like a very long time, didn't say anything. Her green eyes searched Katty's and Katty could feel her judging, weighing and measuring; Caroline was probably the cleverest person Katty knew, and if Caroline trusted the Joker, then Katty was inclined to trust her judgment. But inclined wasn't enough, not know, and she needed the actual story.

"His name was Jack Napier," said Katty softly, and Caroline blinked. "Wasn't it?"

A pause. Caroline nodded.

"He didn't tell me everything," she said, raising her eyebrows in warning. "And what he did tell me was fragmented and confusing as hell. I had to piece most of it together myself."

"That's alright. I trust you."

"You might wanna sit down."

"_That's_ reassuring."

Caroline laughed and they sat down together, sliding down the wall and sitting on the cold stones.

"His name was Jack Napier," said Caroline. "About sixteen years ago, he worked as an intelligence analyst for the CIA."

"What the fuck is up with all these freaking spies?" Katty asked, incredulously, and Caroline gave a wild shrug, laughing a little.

"I feel like we're in a Jason Bourne novel."

"Only with less hot men and a lot more… disaster."

"Damn straight."

"Continue."

"He … found something. These patterns in transnational terrorist attacks, mainly in small countries with few civil rights. Governments overthrown out of the blue, assassinations, a few cities even wiped off the map, things like that. He was obsessed, completely obsessed, and soon he figured out that some group was behind it, some terrorist group. He called them the League of Shadows, and he spent about two years piecing it all together and just when the powers that be started to listen to him-"

"-bad shit happened?"

"You have no idea," said Caroline, quietly, and Katty felt a chill run down her spine. "There was this woman he worked with. They dated on and off, and she… people think he's a monster and he is, Katty, he isn't entirely human any more, but whatever he, this woman was so much worse. She was in the League. They tried to get him to back off but he wouldn't, and he never told me so I don't know how, exactly, but when he wouldn't back off… they sent her. She'd been undercover, and they told her to make him… something."

Caroline drew in a deep breath. "She killed his family. She killed his parents and his sister and her husband, and she-" Caroline's voice was very hard and her knuckles were white. Katty took her hand, reflexively, and Caroline squeezed hard. "His sister had a son. He was three years old, and she killed him."

Katty couldn't hold back the sound she made; it was half a gasp and half a shout.

"Then she waited. She gave him the first scar that day, and she and the League planted evidence that his family was killed over a gambling debt that he had. The CIA buried him.

"That's where it really stopped making sense. He went off the run, went off the grid, and just… some people go insane because they collapse in on themselves, and that's not what happened to him. He went insane because he kept exploding outwards. He couldn't hold it all in, not anymore. He started killing people, and the first time he killed someone, he gave himself the other scar."

"That does explain a lot," said Katty quietly, giving Caroline's hand a squeeze. "And that's fucking horrible, but it still doesn't explain why he wants to help us."

Caroline stared at her. "Katty… don't you know who Bane is?"

_He's an internal hurricane, he's made of ice and he's a genius and he can be kind but he's hard and he's cruel and he might as well be a myth-_

"…no?"

Caroline inhaled slowly. "Katty, Bane is the leader of the League of Shadows."

000

If he tried very, very hard, Bane could manage to stop thinking about either Talia or Kathryn for a few minutes at a time. He thought about them in different ways- Talia was regret and pain and Kathryn was fury- but both of them were distracting, and he could not afford distractions. He'd felt Gotham growing more and more volatile and there was now a stillness in the air, and Bane trusted nothing if not his own instincts. Something was coming, and he could not be distracted by a woman and a girl.

The best way to keep distracted, he'd found, was by observing the people's court of Gotham. Crane was amusing and effective at keeping the population in terror; he had a girl with him, little more than a child, blonde and bespectacled and shaking, who seemed half terrified and half curious, constantly. Bane half wondered what he was doing to the girl. He didn't particularly care, though. He doubted that it was sexual, whatever it was. Crane asserted his power in other ways, most of those being in the courtroom. The man got drunk on fear, and the girl reeked of it.

Bane's fingers moved reflexively over two pieces of string while mercenaries wrestled a struggling man into a chair. He'd picked up the habit in the pit and, strangely enough, it'd been from Talia's mother. It was a habit he'd never bothered to break, and Talia had used to find it funny-

His fingers tightened on the string and then he shoved it into his pocket, turning his back towards Crane on his throne of books and desks, and strode out into the gray cold of Gotham.

Out on the street, he checked the tracker in his pocket and saw that Katty was in the apartment. His jaw clenched under the mask and his fingers drummed on the tablet before he shoved that, too, back into his pocket.

She refused to break and she refused even to bend, and she was goddamned infuriating. Bane wondered how she'd even functioned in the world before this- she was an idealist and she wanted to believe the best even of a city like Gotham, so badly she was willing to make a sacrifice of herself for it.

It was completely foreign to him. He'd never been willing to sacrifice himself for anything (he ignored the quiet voice in his head that whispered _Talia_) and she, it seemed, would have sacrificed herself for anything. The girl was an idiot.

The elevator doors slid open and he heard her singing.

He stood, not frozen but very still, listening- the song was pretty enough and her voice was too, but he couldn't make out the words over the sound of the water and through the walls. He shrugged out of his coat and walked down the hallway to her room. The door to the bathroom was closed and he stood outside it, leaning on the wall, his mask hissing with his breath as he listened. The song sounded Celtic, Irish maybe, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she sang; she had a pretty voice and strong vibrato, and, although she went off pitch several times while he listened, she seemed to have a great amount of vocal control. Her voice was loud, too, though that was no surprise, and it was husky on the lower register and much clearer when it rose higher. It was hardly indicative of heavenly choruses and it didn't inspire anything within him, but it was pleasant enough to listen to.

"-_of all the comrades that ere I had, they're sorry for my going away- and all the sweethearts that ere I had, they'd wish me one more day to stay_-"

He wondered, not for the first time, what she'd been like before. Had she sung happier songs? How many did she know?

"- _but since it fell into my lot that I should rise and you should not, gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be to you all_-"

The mask hissed before he spoke. "You have a lovely voice," he called, and she fell silent abruptly. The water cut off.

"Are you standing out there listening to me sing in the freaking shower?" Her voice was incredulous and muffled.

"Yes," said Bane amiably, amused despite himself. There was a long pause.

"That's fucking creepy, Bane."

He couldn't help himself. He started to laugh.

And, to his intense surprise, Katty started to laugh, too.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons (Cover by Clara C)

"The Parting Glass" by Celtic Woman

A/N: Hello friends! I know it's been forever, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

First off. I'm going to keep writing, but don't expect any more chapters to be posted before May. I've got an EXTREMELY hard schedule (even after dropping a class) and I finally have a job, so my free time is effectively zip. On top of that, I'm trying to study abroad next semester, so I'm constantly doing application and scholarships stuff for that, AND i'm trying to transfer to another college after that semester, so I'm incredibly stressed and busy. Like I said, I'll still be writing, but I'm probably not going to post till May so that I can focus on writing and writing well and not just trying to get the chapter up. I love writing this story but it's not easy to write and it can be very emotionally taxing at times, so I want to work on it when I'm really able to put my best work forth.

If you want other She Rises related stuff, graphics and drabbles and mixes etc, there's a lot of stuff like that on my tumblr, some of it by me and some of it by others. Just remove the spaces.

paradisicaal . tumblr

Second: to those of you who don't like the addition of characters such as Caroline and the Golden Four, they're here to stay. i'm sorry if that means anyone will stop reading, but when I started this story, it was supposed to be about a paragraph long and based on prompts that Holly, Brooke, Caroline and I send each other. This story exists BECAUSE of them. They are not forcing me to put them in the story. i'm doing it because a) the story was developed with the golden four in mind and b) my friends are freaking awesome. Like I said, I'm sorry if that means anyone stops reading, but I want to be honest with you guys and, frankly, I don't like reading comments on what a bitch my friend is. And I realize that this could be because of how i write her, but i also know that there are some people who simply don't like the inclusion of more original characters, which is completely fine. But, as much as I love and respect and extremely value the opinions of my readers, there are some things that won't be changed, and the inclusion of those three girls are one of those things. Now, if you have con/crit on how i could IMPROVE the inclusions thereof, i would absolutely love to hear it!

SO! I hope you like this chapter! If you have questions or criticisms, I'd be more than glad to hear them (but keep them polite and civil, please)! If you have questions, tumblr is the way to go, and i do read every review even though i do't reply to them all.

I CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR WHAT YOU GUYS THINK I'VE MISSED THIS SO MUCH VDSJNJNVDS

(also i start work tomorrow and i'm REALLY EXCITED well technically today cause it's one thirty here so)

EDIT 3/2: GUYS I KNOW YOU MISS BANE, I KNOW YOU REALLY DO AND HE IS COMING BACK IN A BIG WAY IN THE NEXT CHAPTER BUT HIM LACKING IS SOMETHING THAT HAS TO HAPPEN TO MOVE THE PLOT ALONG. I AM NOT JUST DOING KATTY CENTRIC CHAPTERS BECAUSE I'M A NARCISSIST, THERE IS A REASON FOR VERY LITTLE BANE. I'M TRYING TO GET CHAPTER 22 DONE BEFORE I GO ON HIATUS BECAUSE THE STORY IS KIND OF SPLIT INTO THREE PARTS AND 22 IS THE END OF PART ONE (THE OTHER PARTS WILL BE SHORTER) AND BANE IS GOING TO BE MAJORLY IN THE NEXT CHAPTER SO JUST... IF YOU WANT TO STOP READING THAT'S FINE BUT IF IT'S BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF BANE, IT'S NOT GOING TO LAST FOREVER SO JUST CHILL OUT

kind of same with the joker's back story, there is a reason that THAT is the backstory i'm using, and not the comics canon one. again if you don't like it that's cool but there is a REASON for it

everything that's happened in the past two chapters has been done for specific reasons and everything that has happened is what will drive the plot forward so please have a little trust that i'm doing these things for a reason, okay?

Paradisical


	22. The Fall

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

**Trigger warnings: intense fight scenes and psychological trauma**

* * *

_Do you hear the people sing_  
_Singing a song of angry men_  
_It is the music of a people_  
_Who will not be slaves again_  
_When the beating of your heart_  
_Echoes the beating of the drums_  
_There is a life about to start_  
_When tomorrow comes_

**Chapter Twenty-Two:**** The Fall**

The night before the attack, Katty fell asleep early with her hand clenched tightly around her cross, praying a familiar prayer that had lulled her to sleep more times as a child than any lullaby ever had.

Everything was in place. The drugs had been shipped and would be taken in the morning, the teams were set and would be in position, and it might go wrong, but it might go right, too, and that was enough of a trade off to make it worth it.

She forced herself to take in a deep breath and then let it out again, pulling the covers higher over her face. _This might be the last time I sleep in this bed._

Then-

_This might be the last time I sleep at all._

Since Bane'd come to Gotham, she'd been in great amounts of danger several times, but this was different. All the other times she was running away from death, away from danger, clinging to life with everything in her, and this time, she was completely aware of what was happening, and she was running straight for it.

There had to be worse ways to go, she figured. She'd go on her own terms, at least. Death wouldn't sneak up on her, or crawl slowly up her soul like it did to so many- no, she'd run right at it and, when the time came, she'd embrace it.

The weird part was realizing that the time might be tomorrow.

She forced her thoughts off of death and screwed her eyes shut. She was calm, strangely enough. A little nauseous, but peaceful and even sleepy; she felt almost like an outsider looking in, like whatever happened to her tomorrow would happen to someone else.

_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner._

_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner._

_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner._

000

She did not dream.

000

Six in the morning came very soon and she rolled out of bed alert and calm and she showered, filled with a strange stillness and purpose, though her mind was running and she kept going over the plan in her head, visualizing it and trying to think of anything that might go wrong. She dressed quickly and tightly French braided her wet hair, wrapping the loose ponytail that remained into a bun at the nape of her neck, and gave herself a glance in the mirror. She'd lost close to twenty pounds, probably, and she looked about ten years older. There were lines around her eyes and hollows under her cheeks and she thought that she'd take the weight back happily if she could be the girl she'd been.

But it didn't matter, not now. She grabbed her gun and shoved it down the front of her pants; the tracking tablet never left the deep pocket of her jacket but she felt for it just in case.

It was still dark outside, and Bane was sitting at the table in the kitchen, illuminated faintly by the light of the snow outside; there were no other lights on in the apartment. Katty's stomach clenched as she moved to the coffee maker.

"Good morning," he said, his voice low and amicable, the mask hissing under the sound.

"Morning."

"I owe you an apology," he said, his mechanical voice light, and she almost dropped her mug. "For my treatment of you. I have not been kind."

She turned to stare at him, her brows furrowed incredulously. After a few seconds, he raised his eyebrows.

"The customary response, I believe, is an acknowledgement of the apology."

She still said nothing and just stared at him in open-mouthed disbelief as he rose to his feet, his body unfolding gracefully. She forced herself to speak.

"Why are you apologizing now?"

"We have been together for nearly two months-"

"-we are not together-"

"-and know nothing about each other that circumstance has not forced between us." His eyes were burning. "I wish to know you."

She was speechless and stared up at him, studying the now-familiar curves of his face and the hard lines and angles of his mask while the mechanical hiss of his breathing surrounded them. The calm was disappearing now and her brain felt like it was buzzing.

"Do you wish to know me?" he asked, his voice very quiet.

"I want you to let me go."

His eyes crinkled up into a smile. "That is not an option, my dear. You were taken captive and captive you will remain- but you can decide upon the manner of captivity you wish to remain bonded in. It may be an amiable one, or we may continue at cross purposes."

She wanted very much to say _the last one sounds good to me_ but she couldn't quite get the words out, and it was probably a good thing, because she needed him to let her leave.

"Okay," she said slowly, "but why?"

"I tire of fighting with you," he said simply, but his eyes still burned and he didn't blink and she didn't believe it for a second; this was another kind of manipulation. "I wish for there to be friendship between us."

"Did you hit your head on something?" she asked, now seriously concerned. His brows furrowed. "Why in the world would there ever be anything like friendship between us?"

For a moment he said nothing, just looked at her, and there was something very dark behind his gray eyes. Katty was scared to breathe.

"Why indeed," he said, softly, and then turned away from her and sat back down in the chair, before leaning back in it, the fingers of one hand drumming a quick pattern on the table, his eyes fixed on her. She felt a door close, a possibility end- but for the life of her, she couldn't have guessed where it would have led. "We will continue to antagonize each other, if that is your wish."

She turned her back to him, pouring her coffee with shaking hands. She felt the panic now, deep in the pit of her belly, and she didn't know if it came from Bane or from the plans that were about to be made into actions. His gaze was a burn on the back of her neck.

"How could it be anything else?" she asked, her back still to him, forcing her voice to not shake. "We want completely different things."

"Yes," he said, amusement in his voice. "You wish to save Gotham, and I wish to destroy it- but do you still not see how they might be the same?"

She whipped around to stare at him incredulously, and his expression under the mask was unreadable.

"This city is dying," he continued, his eyes burning. "I'm simply easing the path. It is kinder to put a suffering animal out of pain, isn't it?"

_Gotham is not an animal_, she wanted to scream. "Animals don't have twelve million people living on them," she said instead.

"It is the people that make this city what it is," he said. "You showed me that. Gotham itself is nothing more than buildings and streets; it is the people within that make it a disease."

She was shaking now but held her tongue.

"Gotham the city might rise again," he said, and with every word he dared her to do something stupid, like pull out her gun and shoot him, "but Gotham the people will not."

"And you want us to be friends," she said softly, her voice shaking, "when you've just threatened everyone I love under the guise of _kindness_."

The mask hissed. His face did not change. She zipped up her coat and downed the coffee in a few burning swallows- she'd wanted to savor it since it might be her last but there was clearly no chance of that and this seemed to _fit _better, anyway- before tossing the mug in the sink and walking past Bane.

She stopped at the elevator and turned back. Her heart was pounding with the old anger, the kind that made her stupid and rash and thoughtless and she spoke.

"Do you remember the night after you took me to the people's court, you asked me if anyone could be redeemed, and I said yes?"

He wasn't looking at her. She got that feeling again, like a door was closing, and she decided to slam it shut.

"I was wrong," she said, her voice shaking, and then she stepped into the elevator and she stared at the back of his head till the doors closed, and her own angry face was reflected back at her.

000

The old speakeasy was emptier than Katty had yet seen it. Barbara was there, as were Caroline and the Joker and John Blake and his team. Katty's team would be in place near the building come eight, and Caroline and the Joker's would too, around city hall.

Barbara handed her a radio and showed her, briefly, how to work it. It was simple enough and Katty put it in her other jacket pocket.

They gathered around Barbara and she looked around at them all, her brown gaze serious and her face tight.

"Are you ready?" she asked, her voice hard. There were terse nods and she regarded them for a moment, then nodded back.

"Blake, you and your team are moving out in an hour. Katty and Caroline, you and your teams are in position by seven forty-five, and as soon as they start dropping in the buildings, you move in, and you hold the buildings until the bomb is secure. Understand?"

"Yes," said Caroline, and Katty just nodded. The Joker was leaning against a wall, hunched over and curving in on himself; his eyes were empty but his mouth was smiling. He looked like a macabre Halloween decoration, only very, very real and Katty felt a sudden surge of fear that was entirely primal as she looked at him.

Barbara rolled away and John Blake put a hand on Katty's shoulder.

"You alright?" he asked, and she nodded, though at this point her heart was pounding and her hands were shaking. She wasn't sure how much was fear and how much was adrenaline.

"Yeah," she said. "I just want it to start. Get it over with."

He laughed, his dark eyes crinkling up happily. "Me too, Kat. Me too."

He pulled her into a hug and she let him, wrapping her arms around his thin waist and pressing her face against his chest, trying to breathe deep and calm herself back down. It was nice to be held, and comforting, and John Blake did not burn and she loved him for that.

"So," he said, and she felt his chest vibrate with the words, "we still gonna be friends when this is over?"

"Hell yes," she said, her voice muffled against him. "We're gonna build the biggest freaking blanket fort ever."

He barked with laughter and patted her on the head and she grinned against him before pulling back, though she kept her arms around his waist. They were alone in the room, now, and he was smiling down at her, and Katty, not for the first time, thanked God that he'd found her in the alley that day.

They left the small room and went into the main part of the speakeasy, and John dropped his arm from Katty's shoulders. There was a subdued air in the room; few people were talking and those that did speak were quiet. A large chunk of the guns were gone and it was to the weapons table that Katty went first; Barbara had recommended a silencer for the first part of the operation. _Just in case_, she'd said.

Katty picked one and screwed it onto her gun and then felt a chin hook over her shoulder and smelled the familiar scent of Caroline- it was different now, though, from the usual oranges and vanilla. It was still her, only slightly dank, like a t-shirt that hadn't dried quite right.

"Hello, friend," said Katty, hands still on the gun and silencer. Caroline gave a grunt in reply.

"You ready?"

"Always."

"Is your creepy friend?"

The Joker was off by himself, crouched down on his heels, leaning against a wall, staring darkly off into space, his lips twitching. Katty felt uneasy, looking at him, and Caroline pulled away.

"He gets to kill people," the redhead said easily, and Katty looked at her quickly. "He's ready."

Katty studied her face, her brows furrowed.

"Am I making a mistake in trusting him?"

Caroline met her eye, but the words that rolled off her tongue were too smooth, too easy. "No. He wants the league gone just as much as you do."

There was something in that sentence, something dark and something that should have been clear, but Katty was too close to really look, to understand, and so a seed of dread was planted in her stomach.

"I don't give a fuck about the league," she said quietly. "I want Gotham back."

Caroline didn't meet her eye then.

"I need to give you this," she said, suddenly, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. She held it out to Katty, who took it, confused. "It's a map. To Brooklynne."

Katty's eyes widened and she unfolded the paper- it was a map of the sewers under Gotham, split into levels, with one particular path outlined in red.

"Oh my God," Katty breathed.

"Now you can find her. After."

"Thanks," said Katty, and she didn't stop to think, then, why Caroline couldn't get Brooklynne herself.

Caroline grinned, and it did not reach her eyes.

000

Fifty men and women were in place around the apartment building that had masqueraded as Katty's home for two months, and snow was falling in thick white sheets. It was five minutes after eight in the morning, and the mercenary that Katty was watching was beginning to sway. She lifted the radio to her lips.

"It's working. Wait for my signal."

Snow landed on her lashes and she brushed them away, quickly, keeping her eyes trained on the two mercenaries that she could see through the opened window to the ground floor.

At ten after eight, exactly, the first mercenary dropped. The second one was swaying and blinking heavily, and as Katty watched, he fumbled at his waist for a radio.

"Shit, shit, shit-"

There was no time to think about the morals of it. She reached for her gun, braced it against her arm, held her breath and shot. The mercenary fell to the ground, the radio skidding away from him on the floor. Katty exhaled with relief that she'd actually made the shot, tried not to think that she'd killed another person despite the sick feeling in her stomach, and then she lifted the radio to her own lips.

"Move in," she said, and rose to her feet, gesturing to the ten people who were crouched down around her, hidden from view.

They took the building in ten minutes. The drugs worked and most of the mercenaries were pulled and dragged and pushed together in the middle of the ground floor- different teams took other floors, locking mercenaries in rooms and closets, taking their guns and, in many cases, their gloves.

At eight twenty-five, Katty radioed Barbara, her heart pounding with adrenaline and relief.

"Building's secure," she said, watching the pile of motionless soldiers. "How're Blake and Caroline?"

"_Blake estimates another ten minutes before the bomb is reconnected,_" came Barbara's voice, crackling through the radio. _"City hall is secured."_

Katty exhaled. "We did it."

_"Not yet. Once the bomb is secure, I have to make contact with the army. Just keep on your toes."_

For the next fifteen minutes, Katty really thought they'd won. Her father crushed her to his chest and she hugged him back, squeezing her eyes tight and praying that she'd see her family soon, sleep in her own bed, that she'd wake up and it would have been nothing more than a bad dream. Shawn and a few of the other boys were crouched down, examining guns, while a tall woman with dark hair stood by the door and looked out into the thickly falling snow, her face drawn and tight.

Katty unscrewed the silencer from her gun and tossed it to Shawn. He caught it with a grin and winked at her; she shook her head and she stuck the gun down the front of her pants and he rose to his feet, moving over to her-

Her radio crackled. _"Katty, Katty, answer me-"_

"Barbara?"

"_There are more mercenaries. They're coming."_

Katty's blood ran cold and the sick feeling in her stomach intensified. "What the hell do you mean-"

"_I mean that there were more mercenaries within the population, pretending to be citizens, there's a goddamn army of them, and they've taken the bomb back out of the reactor and they're headed for you and for city hall."_

"John-"

_"-he and a few others got out. You need to take a defensive position, Katty, now. I'm sending out the rest and they'll flank the mercenaries, but you need to take out as many as you can. They're coming from the main street, from the front. Defend the front, go, now."_

The radio fell silent and Katty looked up, stunned, her heart pounding. A few people were staring at her.

"Guys," she said, weakly, and then louder- "Guys, to me!"

They gathered around her, some faces hard, some composed, some confused, and some panicking, and Katty forced herself to take in a deep breath.

"There are more mercenaries," she said, looking around the group of huddled soldiers, trying to make eye contact with as many people as she could, "they were hiding in the population and they're on the move. We're gonna set up shooters in the windows- take out as many as you can until Barbara can send in reinforcements. Got it?"

Nods.

"Get your guns, take as much ammo as you need- I want ten people per floor on the top ten floors, and a radio per floor, you got it?"

There was a mad scramble for the weapons and the stairs and Katty gave herself the time to panic, to let her eyes go wide and to run her hands through her hair, clenching at the roots and staring out at the snow- her stomach was clenching and her blood was running cold but there were actions that had to be taken, so she ran for the stairs and grabbed one of the mercenary's guns as she did so, then she reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of ammo. The gun was bigger than hers, an assault weapon and not a handgun, and she couldn't kid to herself that it was only for defense. The thing in her hand was designed for slaughter.

She ran all the way to the top floor, nine people behind her, and when she burst into the open space she realized, for the first time, that Bane had taken the only apartment with a private elevator- the floor was wide and empty, with doors to apartments lining the sides and a row of tall windows.

"Crack the windows open," she shouted. "Set up and keep your head down below. I'll call out targets."

She set up in the middle, her knees hurting as soon as they contacted the cold, hard floor, and pointed her gun down at the street. The snow was falling so thickly that she could only see a few buildings out and the wind was bitingly cold where it came in through the cracks, and snow swirled in around her gun.

"Are we supposed to shoot?" one girl asked, uncertainly. She looked like she was only a few years older than Katty.

"Not yet," said Shawn, and Katty spared at glance at him. His face was hard. She realized that her dad was on another floor, and she felt a wave of sadness so strong it was almost physical. She didn't want to be in charge. She wanted to go home.

It didn't matter and so she pushed it from her mind, focusing her attention on the buildings and the snow.

Several minutes passed with no appearance.

"Where are they?" she muttered.

A few more seconds passed. Then-

_BOOM._

She saw the explosion before she heard it; it was a plume of fire, red and orange and black, exploding upwards into the sky just two streets away. Then the sound hit and sound had never been physical before but this was and the building shook and she shouted, her first thought being that the nuke had detonated.

"What the hell was that?" shouted Shawn, and Katty shook her head to clear her ringing ears, opening her mouth to speak-

The second explosion was bigger than the first, blasting hundreds of feet into the still smoking sky, fire and smoke and debris and Katty realized suddenly that it came from City Hall.

"Oh, God," she said in an exhale, and then she scrambled to bring the radio up to her lips, rising clumsily to her feet at the same time, gesturing for the other nine to follow her.

"Everyone come in, go back down to the ground floor- those explosions came from city hall-"

Before they had a chance to answer, she switched channels as she flung open the door to the stairwell and began to race down the stairs. There were other doors opening, other people pouring out, their faces panicked.

"Barbara? Barbara, what the hell is going on-"

"-_all the mercenaries are moving, they're going to city hall. There are hundreds of them, Katty -"_

"What do I need to do?" Katty asked, forcing herself into calm as she skidded around a corner, her hand tight on the rail and her feet barely touching the stairs.

"-_I already sent out another fifty, I can't send out anymore, there are too many. It would be a slaughter."_

"Barbara, what the hell do I do?"

There was a pause and Katty skidded into the lobby, panting, drenched in sweat.

"What the hell do I _DO_?" she shouted into the radio.

"_Get out." _Barbara's voice was soft. _"Katty, get out, get the people with you and run."_

She was sinking, she was falling away from her body-

"Leave them?"

_"I told you about sacrifice-"_

"There are fifty people over there-"

"_And there are fifty with you who are trusting you to lead them home. Bring them home, Katty-"_

Katty cut off the call and pressed another button, another channel, and held up the radio to her mouth.

"Caroline, where are you- Caroline, please answer me, please-"

But it was not Caroline's voice that came over the radio.

"_She's not, uh…. heeeeere right now."_

Katty froze. "Is she alive?"

The Joker laughed, shrieking and cruel even under the crackling of the radio and even though she was only hearing him, she felt like she was seeing him for the first time. "_Alive and fight-**ing**, little king, fighting with the rest of them-"_

Her blood was running cold and she could feel her heart pounding in her throat. "What did you do?"

He cackled and then he was talking very fast and she could hear his lips smacking, like every syllable was a fruit he couldn't quite fit his mouth around-

_"Explosives are easy to find, little king, and easier to plant- so many friends who wouldn't come out to **play**, no, and now the gang's all together, all the pretty little soldiers-" _his voice dropped to a guttural growl on the last word, "_and they're all coming right for **me.**_"

"You set the bombs- you blew those buildings-"

"_-well I had to get their attention **some**how," _he said, his voice a twisted parody of innocence and it was condescending, too, like she was a child to whom he had to explain something very simple, "-_and your neat little **plan** was the best way to draw out the poison_-"

"You used us," she said, her voice shaking, clenching the radio very tightly. "I TRUSTED YOU AND YOU USED US!"

He laughed, cold and chilling and it crawled up her spine like a spider. "_And that was just your **first** mistake, soldier." _His voice sounded almost normal._ "But they aaaall trusted me. All bought. The **act.**_" He cackled, high and cold._ "Aaaand the saints come MARCHING **IN**!"_

There was a clatter from the other end and she heard the loud pops of gunfire, shouting, and the Joker's laugh over it all, high and cold and shrieking-

Then there was a crunch.

Silence.

For a few seconds Katty stood in silence, staring down at the small black radio in her hands, her heart pounding, her throat clenched- her blood was ice and she was falling farther and farther away from herself and she barely remembered turning to face the forty-nine people behind her.

"They're attacking city hall," she said, and everything was numb. "The Joker drew them to city hall."

"He knew?" someone shouted, and Katty could only nod. This wasn't real- this was happening to someone else. "He knew about the other fuckers hiding out?"

"He knew," Katty repeated.

There were shouts and she forced her voice above them.

"I'm going to city hall," she said, not realizing the words were true until they were out into the cold air. "To get as many people out as I can. If you want to leave, leave now- I can't ask anyone to come with me but I'm leaving, I'm gonna go try and help."

She slung the assault rifle over her shoulder and knelt down, grabbing a box of ammo and refilling her handgun quickly- when she stood back up, about twenty people had gone and her father was right in front of her.

"You can't do this," he told her, using the same voice he'd used when she was in trouble for something much worse than a bad grade or not doing her homework. "You're coming home with me."

"I can't," she said, and it had to have been some other girl saying the words. "I have to fix this."

"There is nothing to fix-"

"I vouched for him," she said, her voice shaking. "I vouched for the Joker, and now this-"

"Katie, he is a psychopathic clown and we all made the mistake of trusting him, no one wanted to believe he'd pull something like this."

"But I vouched for him, dad!" she shouted. "They asked me what I thought and I vouched for him, if I hadn't then they wouldn't have let him lead!"

"You listen to me," he said, his voice very hard, pointing at her, his blue eyes widening. "You are not the only person who made the decision to trust him, Kathryn Sherman. We all did. You are not going to blame yourself for his actions and you will not take responsibility for the collective mistake of close to four hundred people, do you understand me?"

"But I- John _asked_ me if I trusted him-"

"-and John Blake is a cop, and you are twenty years old. This is not your fault and you are not going to sacrifice yourself because a psychotic mass murder started doing what he does best."

"I'm not gonna sacrifice myself, I just want to help- someone has to go help them-"

"And _you're_ the person to do it?"

"I'm the one who's here! Barbara can't help, Blake can't, someone has to go help them-"

"-Katie, they knew from the word go that it might end this way. You need to run because if you go back there and you live and Bane finds you-"

"Dad, I…. people are dying over there, I have to help them."

"What do you think you can do?" he asked, his voice half raised into a shout and his blue eyes flashing. "You aren't a soldier, Katie! You're a _child!"_

_"_But it's my _fault!" _she shouted, and her father's eyes widened and he drew back as though she'd slapped him. "This is my fault, I was the one who came up with the idea for the drugs and I- this never would have happened if I hadn't gotten involved-"

"Kathryn Ivey Sherman." Ted Sherman's voice was deadly quiet. "That is the most self-centered, ridiculous thing I have _ever _heard you say. You are trying to take away the actions of four hundred people who had been planning an attack for a damn long time before you were in the picture. Those people at city hall, who are fighting and dying, they are _not _there because of you. They are there because this is their home and their loved ones being threatened. You have absolutely nothing to do with it and by thinking that you are the reason they are fighting, you have robbed them of their own dignity and sacrifice."

"I- I know," said Katty, stunned. "I just- I just mean-"

"I know what you mean. And you need to understand this- this would have happened whether you'd been involved or not. Probably not the same way, but it would have happened. This is _not _your fault."

She drew in a deep breath, still reeling. "Okay. I get what you mean and- you're right. But someone still has to go help them."

"It doesn't have to be you!" he shouted, grabbing her shoulders.

"No," she agreed, her voice shaking. "But I'm still going to."

He stared at her for a few seconds, his blue eyes very bright. "Then I'm coming too."

"No- mom and Nathaniel and Naomi and Seraphim, they need you, you need to leave-"

"This is not a discussion." His voice was hard. "If you are hell bent on doing this, then I am going with you."

She opened her mouth to speak and he cut her off.

"And," he said, his eyes boring into hers, "if, God forbid, something happens to me, you are not going to blame yourself. D'you know why?"

She shook her head.

"Because I am capable of making my own damn decisions, Katie, just like everyone else here. To assume you can make decisions for anyone but yourself is selfish and insulting."

She nodded, feeling very much like a scolded child.

"Alright, then. Let's go."

She didn't speak. She looked at the twenty who were left, gave a single nod, and then turned her back on them and led them into the cold, her father at her side.

Two streets in the cold and the heavy snow, with the buildings the Joker had blown sending up smoke like a guiding beacon- they heard the fight before they reached it, heard the sounds of gunfire and shouting and the sound of people dying and Katty realized she had no idea how to get anyone out of this.

She looked back at the people following her and gave a single nod.

_I've led them to death._

And then her father's words echoed in her ear and her thought changed and she had a bright flash of clarity- _I haven't led them anywhere. They're choosing for themselves, and I'm just choosing the same thing._

She looked around and the people beside her and nodded; they nodded back, their eyes bright and hard and gleaming. She took in a deep breath and peered around the corner of the building-

There was blood in the snow, and bodies, and she wasn't sure at first whether there were more mercenaries or more rebels lying dead. There was gunfire coming from the windows, dropping mercenaries, and there was the Joker, a whirl of color among all the white and the grays and browns, cackling and shooting and stabbing.

"Go!" Katty shouted, and ran out in front of the building, shooting at the wall of mercenaries the whole time, half hoping to hit the Joker- she ran up the steps to city hall and ducked behind a column, her father hot on her heels, his gun popping off shots with hers- there was a crack and a chunk of the column broke off and she realized that someone had almost hit her.

She drew in a deep breath and peered around the column, pointing her gun at one mercenary and pulling the trigger, then another, then another- she saw a gun swing in her direction and ducked back behind the column again and heard it crack- her father aimed around the other side of the column and she covered him, without being told, and saw at least three mercenaries fall to the ground.

_I have to get people out how the hell do I get people out-_

She scanned the street they'd come up from and saw a manhole and her heart skipped, and then she looked toward the doors to city hall. There was no cover but she could see people in the building, at least fifteen faces that she recognized, their features twisted in shock and fear.

"Dad," she shouted over the gunfire, "dad, there's a sewer entrance to the right-"

"-can people get down it?" he shouted back, ducking back behind the column. She pointed at it and he nodded.

"On three, run for the building. One- two- three-"

Before she had time to really stop and think about it, she ran out from behind the column, shooting blindly as she ran for the door. At least two bullets flew past her and then someone was throwing the door open and she was sliding into the building, skidding across the marble floors.

"Are you okay-"

"-what the hell is going on-"

"-where did those people come from-"

"Listen," said Katty, scrambling for her feet, Ted Sherman's hand on her arm pulling her up. "Out on that street, there's a manhole to the sewers, alright? Our people are blocking them from surrounding the building but there aren't enough of us, we won't be able to do it for long so you have to go, now, go that way- there's gotta be a side door somewhere-"

"You want us in the sewers?" said one man abruptly. "That's trading one death for another, it's a fucking labyrinth down there-"

"-not if you have someone who knows the sewers," came Caroline's voice, and Katty whirled around to see her friend. There was a deep gash on her cheek that was bleeding and her eyes were dark.

"You're alright?" Katty asked. Caroline shrugged.

"Mostly."

"I'm not following her anywhere," someone else said, her voice bitter and hard and her eyes full of poison. "She was with the Joker, and all of this is his fault."

Katty looked back at Caroline and she felt like she was going to throw up.

"Katie," her dad said quietly, a warning in his voice, and she ignored him.

"Did you know?" she asked, her voice hard. "Did you know about this?"

Caroline didn't answer and Katty stepped forward so that they were very close.

"Did you KNOW?" she shouted, her hand reaching for her gun.

"I knew he knew something," said Caroline, her voice calm even though her eyes were filled with something sharp and raw, "but I had no idea it was this, Katty, I swear."

Katty gritted her teeth and stared at Caroline for another hard second before exhaling sharply and whirling on her heel to face what remained of Caroline and the Joker's contingent- probably thirty people out of fifty and there were at least seventy more out in the snow, fighting and dying.

"These are your options," she said to them, her voice hard. "You follow her, or you stay here and probably die. There isn't time to argue with you because I have to try and get as many people out as I can- if you're going, you go now. How many people are there on the upper floors?"

"About twenty, I think," said one man, older, and Katty exhaled; that was most of them.

"Someone go get them, and get the hell out of here. _Now."_

She turned to Caroline. "You wait for ten minutes and I'll send as many as I can, then you get them the fuck out of here, do you understand?"

Caroline nodded. "I didn't know, Katty, I promise- I never would have-"

"Then help get them out. You go with them, I'll send who I can. Ten minutes, and then you leave."

Caroline nodded again and Katty turned back to her dad, watching out of the corner of her eye as Caroline led them to the side of the building

"Dad, will you go with them?"

"I'm not leaving you."

"I wouldn't ask you to but… I don't know if-" her voice had dropped very low.

"You don't trust Caroline."

She opened her mouth, wanting to deny it, but no sound came out. Ted nodded.

"I don't either."

"Will you go with them, please? I'm not gonna fight- I'm gonna go tell people and then I'll follow you. I promise."

Her father looked at her and his gaze was hard, appraising, but there were tears in his eyes. "I'm proud of you, Katie."

She felt tears well up in her throat. "I love you, dad."

He pulled her into a quick hug and told her the address where he and the rest of her family were staying. "When this is over, you come find us, you hear me? You come find us."

"I will, I promise I will."

And then he was gone, jogging off after Caroline, his gun slung over his back and Katty watched him go and then she was running again, running for the entrance and there was no time for fear but it filled her anyway-

She ducked behind the same column, fumbling for her gun, and looked out at the fighting through the snow-

Her heart stopped.

She'd wondered, once, what it would be like to see Bane fighting someone who actually posed something of a challenge to him. She had her answer.

He was a force of nature, every movement brutal and sharp and there was no mercy in the set of his body- his eyes were furious above the mask and her only hope was that he hadn't yet seen her. He was fighting one of the soldiers that she recognized, a massive tank of a man who was a veteran; funny, almost, that he'd left one burning hell for this cold one.

She half ran and half tripped down the steps, shooting one man and watching him fall to ground and grabbed the first familiar person she saw. The Joker, she realized, was gone- he'd left the carnage he'd caused to them, and she wondered how many people in the snow had died because of him.

"Go in through city hall, go out the side door on the left, there's a manhole- go down it- tell anyone you can on the way, I'll cover you-"

The man ran for the building and Katty shot again and another body fell to the snow, his eyes unseeing. She ran to the next one, and she kept her back to Bane.

She managed to tell eight people in all, panting the whole time, words sharp and short and fast, and how many those people managed to take with them through the building, she didn't know. But the eighth one ran and she turned, hoisting the gun, ready to fire-

There was a man kneeling on the ground in front of Bane. Katty stood, frozen, and realized there were maybe twenty of her people still standing- but it didn't matter because she saw the face of the man kneeling in front of Bane and it was Tom Langer.

It seemed to happen very slowly. Langer was glaring up at Bane, his angular face hard and defiant- _he didn't want to fight this battle_, Katty tried to scream but she couldn't make her mouth work, _he told me I was an idiot_- and then Bane's hands where on his neck and then there was a crack and a pop and Tom Langer fell dead into the snow.

There was a roar that was animalistic and Katty looked up through a numb haze to see Tom Langer's husband charging at Bane, his hands bare and she watched Bane drop the center of his gravity just slightly and he caught Langer's husband by the throat and threw him back into the snow. Katty felt numb, winded, and she realized that the people left standing- closer to ten, now, and the snow was red all around them- weren't fighting and were being pushed, one by one, to their knees.

No sooner had she realized it then a hand clamped onto her shoulder and forced her down onto her knees in the bloody snow. It immediately seeped through her jeans, staining them red, and she processed this through a haze. Her heart was pounding and she wasn't sure where the fear ended and the rage began, and she wasn't sure where the rage was directed at- Bane or the Joker or herself, or all three.

_We lost_, she thought, numbly. Then-

_We were never going to win._

She counted. Fifteen people kneeling in the snow and bodies that had been loved, that had breathed, that now bled out and lay motionless in the cold, and suddenly it didn't matter if they where hers or Bane's, all that mattered was that they'd been human, that they'd had fathers once, too.

"I'm so sorry," she didn't realize she'd said, and she wasn't apologizing on her own behalf, she was apologizing to the souls that still lingered in the air that they'd had to die at all, that they'd been so cruelly ripped away. "I'm so sorry."

Bane was turning and then he saw her and she met his eyes and a jolt went through her. His rage was a palpable thing in the air around him, but as he walked to her, his boots crunching in the snow, she realized that hers was too.

"I offer you kindness," he said, and there was no trace of amiability in his mechanical voice now, "and you repay me with blood."

She said nothing and his eyes flashed from hers to the man who held her in the snow.

"Let her stand."

He grabbed her arms and pulled her up roughly- Bane still towered over her. Snow was sticking to her lashes and her cheeks.

"Who else organized this?"

She said nothing and saw his hand clenched into a fist at his side.

"Ever the martyr," he growled, the word an insult in his voice. "What a poor one you make, surrounded by the bodies of those you wished to save with your own blood. You _failed._"

He reached up then and took her face roughly in one big hand, forcing her head slightly backwards, his fingers digging painfully into her face and jaw.

"Take them into city hall," he ordered, his eyes not leaving Katty's. "And tell Barsad to bring the prisoner." His eyes burned and his fingers tightened. "You think me beyond redemption? When this day is over, mine will not be the only soul doomed."

_Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner._

"This could have been so much easier," he continued, and she could see herself reflected in the gray of his eyes. "There did not need to be so much blood shed today."

He kept his hand on her face but stepped to the side and forced her face back down at the bodies littered in the snow. Her vision blurred.

"This is your doing," he said, his voice hard and angry and mechanical.

Her father's words- _this is not your fault_- echoed in her ears but the ring was dull.

She refused to speak and he let his hand fall to her shoulder, turning her to face him again. She saw Barsad leading a small female figure with a bag over her head into the building- she couldn't tell because her vision was still blurred, but Barsad looked paler than usual.

"Come," said Bane, his voice very low. "It is time you reaped your reward."

His hand was a claw on her shoulder as he steered her through the fallen dead and through the snow, up the stairs to the building. She tried to prepare herself for what might meet her inside.

He pushed open the door and his hand tightened on her shoulder.

The fifteen remaining soldiers were kneeling on the marble in the massive, empty lobby, their hands bound behind their backs and a row of mercenaries behind them, their faces grim and their knuckles white on their guns. And there, at the end, facing the door and Katty, stood Barsad, and a pretty brunette girl stood in front of him, her green eyes wide and terrified. Her face was more than just familiar, it came more easily to Katty than most, including her own, but the expressions that normally graced that face were nothing like the shocked terror that she saw now. Something inside Katty's soul wrenched, something seemed to snap-

"_Holly-" _the name was strangled as it tore from Katty's throat and she lurched towards Holly instinctively but Bane's hand was a vice on her and it held her tight. With his other hand he reached around her and pulled her gun out of her jeans and then he tossed it to another mercenary.

"Reload it."

He led her to stand in front of the kneeling soldiers. Her legs were shaking.

"I want you to look at them," he said, quietly, his voice crawling up her neck. "Look."

The first man was Tom Langer's husband, and he met her eye. Not all of the others did, but she looked at them all, the familiar faces, streaked with tears and blood. The mercenary handed Bane back the gun- _the gun I made him give me- _and Bane put it into her hand before letting his hand fall off her shoulder.

"Now," he said, his voice soft. "You are going to make a choice. You must kill your fifteen brave soldiers- or you must kill Holly Wakefield."

Numb. Everything she was seemed to rush away from her head and she stared at Bane, feeling the blood drain from her face.

"I can be merciful," he said, his eyes still burning. "Fifteen for one. Hardly a choice at all, is it?"

She stared at Holly- Holly's mouth was open and her eyes were near perfect circles in her bone white face, and then she looked to the fifteen kneeling men and women. They were crying.

"Katty," said Holly, her lilting voice weak and Katty could hear the tears there even before she looked back, "Katty, it's okay. Kill me. It's alright."

"Please," sobbed one kneeling man, his face crumpled. "Please."

She was shaking, shaking violently, and cold nausea was climbing up her body. This was happening to someone else. She would close her eyes and when she opened them she would be at home, surrounded by her family. This couldn't be real.

"No," she said, her voice weak and shaking and it echoed in the lobby. Bane's eyebrows lifted.

" 'No' is not an option."

_There has to be a way out-_

"This is-" and without thinking about it, without considering anything else, she cocked the gun and put it to the side of her head. Holly half sobbed and half gasped and Bane's eyes tightened and Katty was praying, desperately, in a way that was more for all that it had no words.

They stood that way for what seemed like a very long time, Katty with a gun held to her own head, Bane looking down at her with those burning gray eyes.

"You are a fool," he said, softly. "What do you think your life is worth to me?"

"If you make me do this, I'll kill myself."

"And if you kill yourself, I will kill all of _them_ myself, and I will kill them _slowly_." There was a hurricane behind those eyes. "Do you understand me?"

He blurred as her eyes filled with tears again and she tried to pull the trigger, she wanted to-

But she let the gun fall to her side. Tears were pouring down her face now and she looked at the soldiers on the floor, trying to memorize their faces.

"Please," she whispered, her voice choked. "Please don't make me do this."

"Whatever happens now happens because of the choices _you _made."

"Then punish me," she begged, turning to him, her breath hitching in her throat. "Please, don't hurt them, hurt me-"

"I am."

She let out a gasping sob and tried to force it down, tried to regain some kind of control-

"-enough terrible things have happened," she said, pressing the heel of her left hand into her eyes before looking up at Bane. "Enough terrible things have happened today, to good people-"

"Terrible things happen to good people every day," he said, stepping forward, his eyes burning down into hers. "You are a good person, Kathryn Sherman, and I am a terrible thing."

She screwed her eyes shut, her face crumpling with tears that wracked her whole body- wrenching sobs that echoed around the room, and hers weren't the only ones.

"Please." Her voice was nothing more than a strangled whisper.

"Choose." His was hard, and she pushed her hands across her eyes and then looked to Holly, whose cheeks were stained with tears.

"It's okay," she said, her voice shaking. Barsad was holding her arms very tightly. "It's okay, Katty-"

If there was a right in this, the right choice would have been Holly. One life for fifteen- Bane was right. It was hardly a choice. But Katty looked into the eyes of her friend and her hand tightened on the gun and she couldn't do it- she couldn't bring herself to shoot this girl, her best friend, who she'd known for eight years, who she'd laughed with and danced with and grown with, this girl that made her a better person, this girl who was family and who'd saved her life more than she'd ever know-

She couldn't do it. She felt Bane watching her and knew that he'd known from the start what she'd chose and she wanted, more than anything, to put the gun to her head and pull the trigger, but, like a puppet on a string, she left her hand and her gun at her side.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Holly."

And, sobbing harder with every step, she walked to Tom Langer's husband. She could barely see him through her tears but his face was hard, his eyes were defiant, and she extended a shaking hand, placing the gun against his forehead.

_I am about to murder someone_.

She'd killed before but this was different, this man was innocent and good and she remembered meeting him, remembered the warmth of his hand when she shook it, and now she was going to murder him. The trigger was warm under her finger.

The other people kneeling on the floor were crying now, and a few of them had mercenaries' hands on their shoulders to keep them kneeling.

"-how can you do this to us," one woman screamed. "We _trusted _you-"

"-please," one man sobbed, "please, I just want to hold my daughter-"

_There's got to be some way out-_

She held the gun to Langer's husband's forehead and her breath was hitching but her mind way spinning, her eyes flickering over the mercenaries and the exits as she tried to think- there was no way she could get them all out but if she got Bane, if she took him down, then some of them might stand a chance.

Her hand tightened on the gun and she blinked, trying to get the tears out of her eyes and then she swung around, finger tightening on the trigger-

But Bane had moved. He was right behind her and his hand wrapped around her wrist before she had time even to blink. There was a snap and a crack and a flash of white-hot pain shot up her arm and she shouted in pain, reflexively dropping the gun. It fell to the ground with a clatter and Bane released her; she stumbled backwards, cradling her wrist to her chest. She could barely move her fingers and there were new tears in her eyes, now, tears of pain and fury and desperation. Bane's eyes were bright.

"Did you think the same trick would work twice?" he asked her, his hard voice sliding over her skin. "You have tried to kill me twice now, and both times, you have failed. What a pity that you cannot run this time. Now you have a choice to make." His voice had slipped back into the hollow amiability but his eyes were raw and furious. "Pick up your gun."

She bent down, clumsily, and picked it up with her left hand, her right still pressed to her chest; every movement sent a burning jolt reverberating up her arm.

"Now," said Bane, his voice rumbling, "_choose."_

She stared at Langer's husband- _Dimitri, _she remembered suddenly, _his name's Dimitri_- and he stared back, his eyes hard and defiant. The gun was clumsy in her left hand and she fumbled for the trigger as she lifted the gun back up to his forehead. Her hand was shaking and adrenaline was still pumping through her veins, but Bane was right. She had failed.

_There's no way out of this._

She gritted her jaw even as new tears slid down her face, trying to will herself to just do it; she could hear Holly sobbing and felt despair, in the pit of her stomach, because there was nothing selfless or brave about this. Bane's gaze was burning on her skin.

She couldn't do it; she couldn't make her finger contract, she couldn't pull the trigger. Every second she stalled was another second she wasn't a murderer.

"If you do not make the choice, I will." Bane's voice was hard.

"I'm sorry," she choked, and knew that her time was up. Dimitri nodded, and she pulled the trigger.

There was a bang, a thud, and two people screamed. A body fell to the floor.

Katty's whole arm was shaking as she pressed the gun to the next man's forehead, and she turned back to Bane.

"Please-"

"I am losing patience," he said, and there was something in his voice that she couldn't have put a name too, even if she cared. His eyes were dark and burning.

She tried to stop crying, just so she could stop shaking, and she forced herself to look in the man's eyes when she killed him.

Another bang. Another thud; another pool of blood.

The third was the man who was begging for his daughter and Katty put the gun to his head and thought of her own father, forcing her out of herself begging her to leave with him. Her hand shook on the gun and she let herself think of her family- of her mom, short and round and kind, and her brother, two years younger and a foot taller, her awkward little sister, and her littlest brother, who had so much energy he seemed to run on batteries- and her daddy, shouting _you come find us._

"No," she said weakly, two bodies too late, and turned back to Bane. "No more."

His eyebrows rose. "You made your choice."

"And I'm making another one."

She lifted the gun back to her head, and it wasn't a bluff this time. She saw in Bane's eyes that he knew.

"If you die, they die."

She drew in a shaking breath, the tears cooling on her face.

Her finger tightened on the trigger and she closed her eyes, waiting, praying-

"Stop." Bane's voice was almost contemplative. Katty opened her eyes but did not lower the gun. He regarded her with a flat gaze, judging and measuring and weighing, and she let him as she listened to the sobs and the people kneeling beside her. He looked at her for what felt like a very long time before turning to the kneeling soldiers. Her heart and stomach contracted then and she looked at the two bodies and the pools of blood around their heads and then she looked, stunned, to Holly. Holly looked back, her green eyes wide and bright with tears.

"Your uprising failed," Bane informed the captives, his mechanical growl of a voice polite. "But you did succeed in robbing me of some of my better soldiers, and it seems a shame to waste a good fighter. If you are willing to fight with me, then I am willing to give you your lives." His eyes slid to Katty's. "However… if you give me any reason, at any time, to doubt your loyalty, you are back to square one."

He looked back to them. "Gentlemen, women, the choice is yours. You may drop the gun now, miss Sherman."

It fell to the ground with a clatter.

She was only half aware of the remaining thirteen rising to their feet, shaking- a few of them spoke to her or shouted at her but she didn't hear or couldn't process it, and she was swaying, dizzy on her feet. Her eyes latched onto Holly's and she ran to her and Holly jerked away from Barsad and the two girls threw their arms around each other, sobbing. Katty'd never held a person as tightly as she did then, as she cried into Holly's long hair, clinging to her with everything she had, wanting so badly to disappear, half wishing she'd pulled the trigger anyway.

"Help me," she sobbed, over and over and over. "Please help me-"

"Barsad." Bane's voice seemed to come from very far away and then the two girls were wrenched apart.

"Holly- no-"

"She is returning to her keeper," said Bane, his voice mild. "As you must return to yours."

Katty fell to her knees with a sharp crack and buried her face in her one good hand as her body was wracked with sobs- there was blood everywhere, and she couldn't bear to see it. She heard Bane step closer to her and he crouched down, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"You should know," he said, and his voice was back to being amiable, mild, but only on the surface, "that your friends managed to reconnect the bomb to the reactor. Disconnecting it for a second time increased the instability of the bomb, and now it will detonate in one month instead of two. You have doomed the city you were so desperate to save."

Her sobs echoed around the lobby for a very long time.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Miserables

A/N: Okay, now I really am going on hiatus. I wanted to get this chapter posted because it's a much better stopping point and because it's what the past several chapters have been leading up to, as well as the lynchpin of the plot and character development, romance, etc. I hope that some of the things that weren't so popular make sense now.

Sorry if you're still disappointed.

Paradisical


	23. Ashes

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_And you rip it from my hands  
And you swear it's all gone  
And you rip out all I had  
Just to say that you've won, you've won  
Well, now you've won_

**Chapter Twenty-Three: Ashes**

Bane watched the light hit the top of her head but the light was cold, this time, gray, and coming through a different set of windows; there was still a pool of blood on the floor and her hands were still covered in it but her lips murmured no prayer and this was not a pain that could be patched with little white pills. Her sobs echoed around the lobby, deep and loud and wrenching, and her right hand hung at a strange angle while the left tried to cover her face and the tears that were sliding down it.

Bane stood, watched her, and waited. There was a flicker, deep down, of something that wasn't exactly remorse but it didn't line up with the fury pulsing through him, either, and he ignored it. The fury in his veins was burning, and irrational, and it had made him want to hurt her but her tears and her shaking shoulders brought him no joy; there was none left to be had, not in Gotham.

There were bodies out in the snow that had to be taken care of. There were bodies on the marble floor and a pool of blood that had to be taken care of. There was a broken revolutionary crying on the floor that had been taken care of. The rules of the game had changed, but it had never really been a game, and he had been a fool for pretending it was.

He did not wait for long before grabbing her by her left arm and pulling her to her feet. She shouted at him and struck, blindly, with her right hand; she gave a strangled cry when it hit his chest and immediately pulled it back in and cradled it against her own chest. And then she met his eye for the first time. Hers were red and bloodshot and that made them all the bluer; her face was pale and streaked with tears and there was no fire in her eyes, and no ice, either. There was a hole behind them, a pit that he knew she'd fall into.

She didn't say anything but she met his eye evenly, tears still sliding onto her cheeks. The mask hissed as he drew in a breath.

"Your wrist is broken."

A pause. The mask hissed again.

"Are you ready to go home?"

She still met his eye but her face crumpled, slightly, and her eyes filled with tears as her eyebrows pulled upwards. He turned his back on her.

"Come."

They did not speak as he led her through the empty streets of Gotham. The snow was falling still harder in thick white sheets, and Bane could not see more than a few feet in front of him. He didn't bother to look back at her but he could hear her; her breath hitched, occasionally, and she stumbled more than once in the thick snow on the streets. His blood still boiled and he realized that he was gritting his jaw under the mask and he let it course through him, let it fill him and feed him till any sympathy for her was pushed aside.

She was a fool and he was too and now they'd both been pushed to a cliff with an abyss stretching out endlessly underneath them; the only question remaining was who would jump first and who now had farther to fall.

The apartment building was quiet and echoing. There were signs of the failed revolution lingering still; scattered weapons in the lobby, broken windows with snow swirling in. Bane looked down at Kathryn and if she felt his eyes on her, she didn't respond. Her face remained pale and drawn and Bane slid his eyes away from her as they stepped into the elevator.

When she spoke, after the doors had closed, her voice was quiet and thick. "You knew I was going to pick Holly."

His eyes slid down to her again but she wasn't looking at him. Her hair was a tangled mess around her face.

"Yes," he said, and her jaw clenched slightly and then released a second later. "Did you?"

She did look at him then, perhaps out of shock more than anything else and her eyes were still hollow but they were measuring, too, and she did not speak again.

The doors slid open and Bane gestured in front of him for her to go first; she obeyed, and he took no gratification in it.

"Your wrist needs to be set," he said, his voice light under the ever-present mechanical growl. "Or it will heal poorly."

"Let it," she said, and her voice was so quiet he could barely hear it. Her back was to him.

"I beg your pardon?" he said, moving slowly towards her, the challenge clear in his voice. She still didn't look at him but when she spoke next, her voice was much louder.

"I said _let it."_

"Ah, is this to be your new penance? You couldn't die for your city but you can suffer all the same-"

She whirled around then and the movement was not graceful; she stumbled and Bane felt a stab of pity for her, for this tiny pale girl who had been in over her head for so long.

"You don't know- _anything_-" she said, and she was shaking and the words were hard but quivering. He let silence build between them.

"No. Perhaps I don't- but I do know that your wrist needs to be set."

"I don't want you to set my goddamn wrist, _Bane_," she spat, and her voice shook with fresh tears. "I don't want you to help me, or stitch me up- I don't want you to keep pretending there's some sort of good there-" she actually jabbed him in the chest with the index finger of her left hand, "-when it's all part of some- manipulation. I don't want your help, I don't want to talk to you or look at you or be anywhere near you-"

"But alas, you will get none of the things you want. Now, give me your hand."

There was no fire in her eyes, and very little bite in her voice. "Fuck you."

She turned from him and he grabbed her shoulder, yanking her back and twisting her around- she looked up at him, her eyes narrowed but hollow and the cross glinted on her chest. He wanted very badly to rip it off, but something held him back; there was a line in her soul and he felt that the loss of her cross would pull her over it.

"Give me your hand." Every word was quiet and deliberate.

"Or what?" Kathryn asked, her voice equally quiet, her eyes desperate but hollow. "What else can you do to me?"

His raised his eyebrows and the mask hissed. "I still have Holly Wakefield. Would you lose her, now, after all you've sacrificed to keep her save?"

There was a beat of silence.

She gave him her hand.

She made no sound while he set and taped her wrist despite what had to be excruciating pain and gave no thanks after. Her cheeks glistened with fresh tears the whole time, and something behind her eyes seemed to have turned off. He rose to his feet and turned his back on her for less than two seconds, and when he looked back, she had disappeared and her door was slamming closed. He let her go and he spent several hours at the table, blueprints of City Hall spread in front of him. Other blueprints, too, of the sewer system, of the one forgotten tunnel that led out of the city. He traced it with one finger.

The fury hadn't gone but it had changed; it was less wild, more hardened and more focused. He thought less of wanting to see her tears again and more of what needed to be done next. Her privileges would be revoked, of course. There would be no more hospital and whatever camaraderie might have eventually formed between them, it had ended this morning. He had lost sight of what she was, what he had intended her to be; he had meant her to be an example and somewhere in the middle she had become a project, and that had been foolish. But today may have served its purpose. The citizens of Gotham wanted so badly to rally around something that they would have settled for her, with her childish fire and her reckless bravery, and now she was yet another symbol that had been ripped from them. She had chosen the life of one over the life of many.

And Bane had not expected her too, despite what he'd told her.

But Kathryn Sherman and her choices no longer mattered. Gotham had one month of icy survival left, and all he had left to do was keep the city afraid. After today, it wouldn't be difficult. The bodies of the dead would soon be hanging around the city for the citizens and the world to see, and the blood would stain the snow until it was covered by another fall.

And, most importantly, word would spread, and, with it, fear.

Bane stood and walked to the window, his hands clasped at his back, and looked over the city. The moon was out, full, illuminating the snow on the ground. The city was dark and blue; a ghost town inhabited by twelve million.

From Kathryn's room came silence, and, this time, he did nothing to prevent the possibility of suicide, though it nagged at him, a tiny thing at the base of his brain. She wasn't the type to give up, but she'd never been pushed this far before, either, and he didn't know what she might become. When she'd held the gun to her head for the second time, there had been no lie in her eyes, no shaking in her hands. She would have pulled the trigger. She would have died while he watched.

He drew in a deep mechanical breath.

There were things that had to be done. He had become so assured that Gotham was terrified, incapable of action, and the events of today had proven how wrong he was. The city needed to be reminded, constantly, that they were not free. That they would all die.

Bane had always been a man of action. He was not a man who enjoyed waiting or "holding down the fort" though he was spectacularly good at both, and, yet, he had become exactly that. There was a special kind of violence in the waiting he now forced upon Gotham but it was a violence of the mind; it was a particular pleasure of a very specific kind. It was violent and cerebral and it was a thrill to hold that power in his hands, to be able to toy with an entire city before he destroyed them.

But he craved the physicality of days long passed.

He exhaled, the frustrated mechanical sound echoing around the empty room; he almost expected to hear some flat sarcastic comment in return, but there was only silence. Not even running water.

There was a grudging concern in his chest. He did not want the girl to die and he tried to ignore that fact as much as possible, but the cold silence was pressing into him and it seemed to be tying to pull him in the direction of her room. He let it.

He did not knock and he didn't see her at first, either, and the concern deepened. Then his eyes fell on the corner of the room. She was sitting with her back pressed against the junction of the two walls, her legs pulled up to her chest and her arms crossed on her knees. Her chin was resting on her arms and she was staring, unblinkingly, with no expression on her face. Her eyes were glinting and her cheeks were wet.

He felt an ache of emotion that he refused to name and he pushed it away, quickly, replacing it with anger.

"Have you slept?"

She said nothing and did not move. The anger tightened and he clung to it.

"Answer me." His voice was amiable. Her eyes slid to him. The cold blue shadows of night hid their color but the glint was hard and hollow and wet.

"No."

"You should," he said. "Sleep will offer a release."

She didn't blink and when she spoke, there was no fight in her voice. "Why do you care if I get any release at all?"

There were a few seconds of silence and Bane's fingers drummed out a familiar pattern against the thick material of his pants while Kathryn stared straight ahead at whatever monsters lurked beyond her vision.

"It could have been much easier for us both." His voice was a low growl and her eyes finally met his.

"No." Her voice was completely devoid of emotion and the blue shadows cast strange light across her face. "It couldn't."

The anger, again, fresher this time- he had been kind to her, protected her from what her precious city had become and yet she had quarantined herself from him, in every way, and continued to struggle against him at every turn although he had shown her mercy.

"Why?" he asked, forcing his voice into disinterest and he knew his eyes were burning into her but her face was still so expressionless. "I have been kind to you. I have shown you mercy. I have given you a warm bed, food, safety, even books. I have allowed you freedoms, and I have not been cruel to you, yet your every action has been one of rebellion. Why?"

She held his eyes for a few seconds and then looked away, silently. The rage grew in his bones and he crossed the room in a few swift strides, saying, "You will answer me."

And then he was standing over her and his fingers were drumming that pattern, more insistently now, and, slowly, her eyes rose up and up to meet his, but she still said nothing. She seemed to be measuring him with that emotionless gaze, like part of her wanted to speak but she no longer had the energy for it. In the time it would take to blink, Bane bent down so that she was trapped in the corner and their eyes were almost level. She didn't flinch and she didn't move and he was close enough that he could smell the warm sweat of her tears mingled with the heavy metallic scent of blood- the ever present gardenia was faint, now, barely noticeable under the stain that was left on her.

"Answer me." His mechanical voice was hard, and there was no amiability.

"You destroyed my home," she said, her voice tired. "You came to my city, to my home, and you sacked it like you owned it. You killed people. Kids were killed in those explosions on the first day, and more and more people have died every day since then. You took this city and you turned it into something horrifying. You're a terrorist, you're nothing more than a terrorist and you want me to be grateful because you showed me mercy? How could you ever think that any kindness you showed me could ever begin to touch the horror you pushed on my family and my friends, on my home? How could- could a bed and books make up for everything we've lost?"

"I protected you," he said, his eyes narrowing. "You think the people you love so much would have done the same?"

"I wouldn't have needed protecting if you never came in the first place. You think I owe you kindness because you haven't been a complete monster to me?"

"Yes."

For a few long seconds, she said nothing. "Why did you take me?"

His mechanical breathing filled the space between them. "You were a liability. It would have been foolish to leave you to the city."

"Then why not kill me?"

He searched her eyes and he almost wished she would show some emotion; there were still tears glistening on her face and in her eyes but her voice was tired and her eyes behind the tears were empty.

"I planned to make an example of you."

"Well," she said, quietly. "Job well done, then. You've won. Are you happy?"

But he knew how victory felt, and it did not come with this unease.

"It was never about winning," he said, his voice amiable once more. "You have served your purpose, both to Gotham and to me."

"So what now?"

She was ready to die, he realized, and he realized it suddenly, surely, and it sank in to him. She was ready to die and she had been for quite some time- he had no idea if she _wanted_ to die, but she had the air of someone who had signed away their promise of a future a long time ago. There was nothing noble in it. For her, it was the only logical way of facing what was to come. Clinging to life would bring her nothing but misery.

"Now," he said, raising his eyebrows, "Gotham waits."

"For the bomb." There was emotion in her voice then, a faint shadow of anger and disgust. He smiled.

"Yes."

Her eyes searched his and she fell silent once more; he rose to his feet.

"Sleep," he said, his voice a mechanical command. "This will be our last night in this building."

"Are you ready to die, Bane?"

He stopped at the door and his muscles tightened and her eyes burned into his back. He did not answer.

000

Holly Wakefield was kept on the floor directly underneath his, and it was there that Bane went now. He knocked, once, on the door, and heard locks clicking out of place and the door opened to reveal Barsad.

"Bane," said the mercenary, his voice soft. Bane's eyes searched his face.

"Where is she?"

Barsad opened the door more and Bane stepped into the apartment, his eyes searching it swiftly. It was a stark contrast to the apartment he shared with Kathryn; its previous owners had painted it in warm shades and there were candles lit on almost every flat surface. Holly Wakefield was on the couch, wrapped in a thick blanket, an empty look on her pale face. She looked up at Bane and there was no fear in her gaze, but something very much like disgust.

"Miss Wakefield," said Bane, his voice filled with a hollow friendliness. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she said, her voice soft.

"You certainly have a loyal friend."

She said nothing.

"Considering that she is the reason you are a captive in the first place, however, one must wonder… do you still consider her a friend?"

Silence. The green eyes were icy and Bane's hands found the edges of his vest as he lifted an eyebrow. Holly Wakefield was a hard woman to read and he sensed a certain steel underneath the soft exterior she wore; these things made her significantly more interesting, but also much more difficult to probe.

"She is certainly a dangerous friend to have."

"I'm still here," she said, a warning in her quiet voice, "aren't I?"

"It must be strange," said Bane, his eyes burning into hers, "to have your life depend on the actions of another. To be simply a bargaining chip."

Holly raised an eyebrow then and looked almost amused. "You think I'm a bargaining chip?"

Bane raised both his eyebrows. Holly's eyes flickered to something over his shoulder and then flashed back to him. She gave a nonchalant shrug.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"Should I be worried about you, Miss Wakefield?"

"Oh, of course not." Her voice was flat and her eyebrows lifted. "I'm just one girl, after all."

The mask rasped.

"One girl can be deadly."

She said nothing, but her lips twitched.

"You and your friend must make quite a lethal duo, Miss Wakefield. It's a shame you must remain separated."

Holly looked then like she wanted to say something very badly, and that logic was the only thing holding her tongue. She did speak, however, and every word was careful.

"If you think Katty and I need to be together to be lethal, then you haven't been paying attention."

The words weren't a threat so much as a fact and there was something else understood behind them; they were lethal together, they were lethal separated, and they were lethal when they operated as completely separate entities. Holly did not need Katty to be lethal, and she thought Bane a fool for assumed that this was the case. Bane's eyebrows tightened.

"Indeed. Barsad."

The quiet mercenary followed him out of the apartment, away from Holly Wakefield, and Bane shut the door behind them. The rasp of his mask filled the silence, and his voice, when he spoke, was mild.

"Have you slept with her?"

Barsad's face didn't change. "No."

"And are you… in love with her?"

"No."

Bane's eyes searched his face. Barsad was lying, about one or the other, but it didn't matter; they'd all be ashes soon enough.

"We are moving," he said. "To city hall. There are a few private rooms, aren't there?"

Barsad nodded. "Crane's got the biggest one. He's keeping that girl there, the one he's been doing experiments on."

Bane raised an eyebrow. "Impressive, that she's still alive."

Barsad gave a noncommittal half shrug.

"No matter. He will have to move. I want you and Wakefield there, as well, in separate accommodations from Sherman and myself."

"Yes, sir. When do we leave?"

"Four hours. The girls are not to see each other."

Barsad nodded. "Understood."

000

He returned to the cold, still apartment and looked around it. Barsad's apartment had been warm and… hospitable, for lack of a better word, but this apartment was frigid and unwelcoming, full of anger. He wondered if Holly Wakfield was in love with Barsad and he wondered if there might have been a time when Kathryn could have fallen in love with him.

It didn't matter.

They'd all be ashes anyway.

He knew Barsad would set into motion the chain of events which would culminate in Crane and his captive leaving the suite in city hall; there was nothing for him to do but wait. It was one o'clock in the morning.

He wanted very badly to go back into Kathryn's room, to talk to her- she'd planned a revolt right under his nose and he wanted to know how. He wanted to know how she felt, inside, if she felt raw and scrubbed out, if she felt hollow. He wanted to know if she welcomed death as well as being prepared for it.

He wanted to know how she could accept her death so easily, like it had always been a part of her. She was so young- twenty years younger than he- and yet she could face death with more grace than he could. How? Did it have to do with that silver cross around her neck?

What would happen if it was taken from her? What would she become? Did he really want to know?

He sighed, exasperated with himself, angry at her, curious in a detached sort of way towards Holly and Barsad- and exhausted. He was tired, down to his core, and he felt old.

Turning on his heel he strode out of the living room and into his room. He did not have much to bring with him. He packed the drugs that allowed him to take off his mask, the old quilt from decades ago, and the book, all into an old rucksack that had been to more countries than most people knew existed.

He did not feel like waiting. He slung the bag over his shoulder and crossed the hall, pushing open the door to Kathryn's room. She had not moved from the corner but her head had fallen onto her arms, her face hidden and her hair sliding down her arms and shoulders.

"Kathryn," he said, his mechanical voice hard, and her head jerked up. Her eyes were red and swollen but the tears seemed to have stopped.

"Do you still have the bag that I first gave you clothes in?"

Slowly, she nodded.

"Pack it. We're leaving."

He waited for her in the living room, and she did not take long. He heard her retching and the sound of the toilet flushing and then she walked out of the room, pale, her hair falling in shaggy waves around her face, slouching slightly under the weight of the bag. It looked like she'd packed all the books and his eyes flicked from the bag to her face; so much of the weight she'd carried when they first met had slid off her body and although she'd always be a soft woman, her face was much harder, the cheekbones in her round face strangely sharp.

"Come," he said dismissively, turning his back on her and walking into the elevator. She joined him, and he noticed that she'd scrubbed away the smell of blood. Her hands were raw and cracked and her lips were too; he wondered how long she'd spent scrubbing at them both.

There were no streetlights lit in Gotham but tonight they didn't need them; the full moon and the snow on the ground gave them all the light they needed. Bane was perfectly warm under his coat but Kathryn was shivering, her teeth chattering, and her eyes were glistening again.

"You're still crying," he said, and it wasn't a question.

"Can't stop," she said, her voice shaking.

"Tears won't solve any of your problems."

"You think I don't know that?" she snapped, her voice more high pitched than normal. She shoved her hand across her eyes. "I just can't stop- freaking crying-"

Bane fell silent and they walked several more streets in dead quiet.

"You have killed before," he said as city hall came into view. "Why is this time so different?"

There were no bodies, not anymore, but the snow was stained red and her tears flowed harder. She was sobbing now, sobbing mostly silently, her hand pressed against her mouth and her eyebrows pulled up, tears pouring down her cheeks. She stopped walking where the blood was thickest and stood there, alone under the moonlight, her shoulders shaking. Bane watched her from several feet away. Her sobs were quiet, gasping things and she had both hands pressed against her mouth, now, her shoulders hunched against the grief that wrapped around her.

A few minutes passed and eventually she straightened up, wiping her face. The tears had stopped and her eyes were very red, her face very pale. She walked back to Bane and said nothing. He did not repeat his question.

There was no power in city hall and their footsteps echoed around the massive marble lobby as Bane led them to the stairs.

"We are at the top," he informed her, and then they started climbing. She didn't make a sound.

The top two floors were private rooms, upscale hotel style, that were often rented to visiting ambassadors and various higher-ups in government. As they reached the top floor Bane hear a man's voice, low and dripping with condescension, and a girl's much quieter voice.

"You remember Doctor Crane, I trust?"

"He's hard to forget," she said quietly, and Bane's lips twitched as he opened the door to the private landing. The thin form of Jonathan Crane was illuminated by the moonlight through the windows and there was a girl there, too, younger than Katty. Jonathan Crane whipped upright and around and his lips twisted into a thin smirk when he saw Bane.

"Well, hello, boss. Come to oversee the eviction yourself?"

"You only have to move down one floor, Crane."

"Ah," said Crane, that smirk still on his face and his eyes narrowed. "But one floor to you is a whole world to me." His eyes flashed to Kathryn. "I remember you."

Bane glanced down in time to see her eyebrow twitch upward.

"You were the, uh… the hero, right?" He grinned at her, a hollow grin that didn't meet his pale eyes. "How the mighty have fallen."

There was no reaction from Kathryn except that her eyebrow rose higher. Crane leaned closer to her.

"What are you afraid of?"

"We should go," spoke up his companion, her voice shaking slightly; she had the look of a rabbit about her. Crane ignored her.

"Well?" he asked, cocking his head slightly. Bane considered snapping his neck.

"Demons," said Kathryn, finally, her voice quiet. Crane's eyebrows lifted.

"That's all?"

"Time for you to leave, Jonathon," said Bane mildly. Crane's eyes flashed up to Bane and he shrugged.

"As you wish. I guess we'll be seeing much more of each other in such cramped quarters."

"For your sake," said Bane shortly, "I hope not."

And he placed a hand on Kathryn's back and pushed her through the door before she had the chance to object to his touch; as soon as the door was slamming shut behind them she ducked away, out of his reach, and the look she gave him then had an empty, reproachful measuring.

The room was big, and empty, with a long couch along one wall and a fire pit in the middle of the room. The beds that had once been in the room were gone, and there was a ragged curtain at the end of the room that stretched about fifteen feet long, and there were cots on either side of it. There was a bathroom with a shower on the other side of the room, and a kitchen, but the once loft-style suite was now bare and militant. Kathryn stood in the middle, illuminated by the moonlight, looking around. She would have almost no privacy.

"Welcome home," said Bane.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Gave You All" by Mumford and Sons

A/N: I LIVE!

I know, I'm surprised too. However, the hiatus was VERY much worth it. I brought my GPA up by .18, have been working a lot, and am well on my way to studying in London this summer. I am also excited about this story again; I've talked before about how difficult it is to write, and I'm now in a place where I can work on it without negative emotional side effect. I'm going to try (try being the keyword) to update once a week until I leave for vacation in July, and then I'll try to keep updating regularly once I get back until I leave in September. My goal is to have the story done by then. There will probably be ten/fifteen more chapters. However, it goes without saying that I make no promises. My schedule is hectic at the best of times and I'm still working, but I will try my best!

I hope you enjoy this chapter! Can't wait to hear what you think!


	24. Twenty-Eight Days

_**She Rises **_**by Paradisical815**

* * *

_I had a way then losing it all on my own_  
_I had a heart then but the queen has been overthrown_  
_And I'm not sleeping now, the dark is too hard to beat_  
_And I'm not keeping now the strength I need to push me_

_You show the lights that stop me turn to stone_  
_You shine it when I'm alone_  
_And so I tell myself that I'll be strong_  
_And dreaming when they're gone_

_Noises I play within my head_  
_Touch my own skin and hope that I'm still breathing._  
_And I think back to when my brother of my sister slept_  
_In an unknown place the only time I feel safe_

**Chapter Twenty-Four: Twenty-Eight Days**

Bane was not someone who was used to worry; it didn't fit right on him now and it felt old, stale- or maybe it was like a pair of new boots that had yet to be effectively broken in, but, whatever metaphor he used to rationalize it to himself, he was worried about Kathryn and that made him very annoyed with her.

There were several levels to the worry. He'd moved them to city hall two days ago, and since then, any food he'd forced her to eat had been thrown up. It was no rebellion; she just couldn't keep it down. She'd lost more weight, her clothes practically hanging off her still soft body, and there were deep purple shadows under the eyes that had all the violence and the blue but none of the spark. She hardly spoke to him and there wasn't fire in her voice as much as there was a sort of ember, and he saw silent tears constantly on her face. She had the look of someone who was in the process of caving in on herself and had found a way to stay in stasis. She was frozen in her grief, and, Bane suspected, in her guilt. It seemed familiar to her, like an old friend she'd hoped to never see again, but it did not suit her and he drew no joy from witnessing it.

He was fairly certain that the grief and the guilt were not an act; she had no way to rebel against him again, no cause to give him worry, and yet he felt uneasy. He felt like he was waiting for something that went beyond the month that the bomb allowed, and he felt like Kathryn Sherman was the source of that waiting.

In the two days since the failed rebellion, the people of Gotham had fallen to an icy silence. The streets, sparse since he arrived to the city, were now all but empty, with the sight of a person being more rare than the lack of one. There had been no word on the Joker, or of the remainder of the army that had failed so spectacularly.

_They wouldn't have failed if the clown hadn't betrayed them_, a voice in his head reminded him, and he clenched his fists. No, they wouldn't have- they would have succeeded and Kathryn Sherman would not be collapsing under the weight of her own grief.

He had not heard a word from Talia.

000

She was curled on her cot, her eyes open, a blanket wrapped over her shoulders. Bane saw the tears that seemed to be permanently sparkling on her face, pooling in the space between her eye and her nose. Sleep, the one thing that might offer her some brief peace, seemed to elude her, and Bane did not know whether he felt glad or saddened by that fact. He hardly knew how he felt about any of this outside from the facts; she rebelled against him, she had to be punished, and this was her punishment.

Grief. It was a strange thing to witness and, Bane assumed, staring down at Kathryn, stranger to feel. Grief was an emotion that he had never experienced for himself; sadness, yes, but not the dark thing that consumed her now.

"Kathryn," he spoke, finally, and she didn't even blink. "Have you eaten today?"

"I tried," she said, her voice low.

There was nothing else to say and so he left her there, curled up on the cot, her eyes unseeing.

When he looked back, a few minutes later, she had wiped the tears away.

000

He did not leave her alone. She looked devastated and she certainly acted that way but he had no intention of repeating the mistake of trusting her; when he wasn't in the apartment, there was a guard stationed outside, but Kathryn Sherman did not try to escape.

For three days, he left her to her silence and her grief. He took Barsad and two other men, blueprints of the sewers that had housed them for months, and went in search of the Joker. He doubted from the beginning that they would find him. The sewers under Gotham were labyrinthine, multileveled, with some of the levels dating back to the 19th century. The tunnels twisted and turned and even Bane had not ventured far into them when he lived in them because he knew how easily one could find themselves lost in the dark. If you got lost under Gotham, you would stay lost under Gotham.

The dank, dripping dark left all of them in foul moods. As predicted, there was no sign of the Joker, though there were other people living in the tunnels and, closer to the entrances, there was a constant murmur of voices coming from the hive of trapped police men and women. Bane stood outside one pile of rubble for a few minutes, staring at it in amusement, wondering what the few and the brave on the other side would do if they had any idea how close to the cause of their suffering they were.

There were other people that Bane looked for in the sewers. Rumors were spreading of a couple, a man and a woman, who had been leaving supplies in alleys where people were certain to find them. They had saved quite a few lives by now, always leaving their care packages in places where the most impoverished of Gotham tended to populate, and no one as of yet had any idea who they were apart from the fact that one was male and one female. They had only been seen a few times, and were wearing hoods each time. Bane didn't particularly care and if there hadn't been an attempted revolution days previously, he probably would have left them to their business.

Now, it was a different story, and if he could find them (doubtful, in the sewers) he would stop them.

But they found nothing except for green puddles and overgrown rats.

000

On the third day, Bane decided that Kathryn had wallowed long enough (and was somewhat surprised to find that he missed the biting banter that sometimes flowed between them) and went about trying to rouse some sort of reaction from her. It was partly an experiment; he wasn't entirely sure if he'd pushed her off the edge yet or not, and he wanted to know if he had and, if he hadn't, what it would take to get her to jump.

Because, he was realizing, that was what he wanted. He did not want to drag her down to his level, anyone could do that- no, he simply wanted to pull her to the ledge. And then he wanted her to choose to jump.

When he returned, fairly early in the morning, she was no longer in the cot but had moved to the couch. There was no book in her hands and she simply sat, staring, her pale face expressionless. Bane let the door close behind him with a quiet click and walked over to her, every movement slow and calculated. She did not look up at him.

"How is your wrist?" he said. She glanced down at it.

"Still there," she said, and there was no inflection at all in her tone, no biting, easy humor. Bane held out a hand.

"May I?" he asked mildly. She did glance up at him then, and put her wrist in his hand. It was swollen, under the tape and the binding, and he realized that he should have changed said binding at least a day ago.

"Stay here," he told her, and returned moments later with the well-used first aid kit.

The wrist was swollen and ablaze with colors, but it was healing straight and she could use all her fingers well. There were purples, mostly; purples and angry reds and green forming around the edges. Bane traced a calculated finger over the area that was the most swollen and the most bruised, and her fingers tightened slightly in his hand but that was her only reaction. Her face didn't change at all; he felt her eyes on him, uncaring, without the usual steady measuring.

He ignored her gaze and gently rebound her wrist while she sat very still. When he was almost finished, she spoke.

"Why are you being nice to me?" she asked, her voice flat and quiet and his eyes slid up to hers very quickly as the mask rasped.

"There is no reason to be cruel to you," he said simply, raising his eyebrows. "The lesson seems to have been learned."

"Lesson," she repeated quietly. "Is that what it was?"

It wasn't really a question.

"In a few days," said Bane, "once your wrist has healed more fully, you will continue learning how to fight."

She actually smiled then, in a bleak sort of way. "If we're going to die in a month, that seems pointless."

He raised his eyebrows. "It passes the time."

She shrugged slightly, and Bane hesitated.

"Are you afraid of death?" his voice sounded more mechanical than normal.

"No." There wasn't a second of hesitation. "It doesn't mean I want to die."

_How? _He wanted to ask her. _How can you accept it?_

"If only you were to get what you want," he said, instead, and rose to his feet. Her eyes followed him.

"Are you?" she asked. "Are you afraid of death?"

"No," he answered. Her eyes were empty, but beyond that, they were cold.

"Are you ready to die, Bane?"

His chest clenched and he lifted an eyebrow; it was the second time she'd asked him this question.

"My dear, death is something to which readiness means little."

"You don't get ready for death for death's sake," she said. "You do it for your sake, and for what comes after."

The mask hissed.

"For someone like me," he said, "it makes little difference."

"What would happen," she asked, suddenly, "if you died before the bomb went off?"

His eyebrows lifted before he really processed the question. Her gaze was flat, containing no threat, and her posture hadn't changed at all.

"Are you going to kill me in my sleep, girl?"

She said nothing.

"You would be wasting your time if you did. If I were to die, Barsad and others would hide my death and security around the bomb would be tightened." _And around Talia,_ he thought, but didn't say. "Gotham would still burn."

"Would it really be so bad if the bomb didn't go off?" her voice was quiet. Bane's hands clenched into fists at his side.

"The bomb will go off in twenty-eight days. It is useless to fight against something which is set in stone."

But he tasted uncertainty in the air.

000

He hated feeling restless. He liked having things to do, liked constantly moving and taking care of business, and the endless waiting was grating on him. In was January the fifth, and there were twenty-eight days until the bomb went off. He was trapped by the cold, gray ice of Gotham and by the abrupt black end that awaited him on the other side.

He didn't believe in heaven, and hell to him seemed to be something that people did to each other, but the idea of being nothing for the rest of eternity was more unsettling to him than being tortured for eternity. He'd been tortured before. He'd never not existed before and he couldn't quite wrap his head around it now, how fast death was, how final and how it had been creeping up in his soul for so many years, and he'd never even realized it. He'd killed more people than would be logical to count and he had lived for a very long time with his own death always hanging over his head (and for a while he'd really believed he could embrace it) but he'd never let himself actually think about it.

He was not ready to die. Something inside of him felt like a panicked, wild animal at the thought of death; and yet Kathryn Sherman sat on the couch and asked him if he was ready to die without a flicker of fear for her own death. She was twenty years old and she had prepared herself to never be more than that.

_How?_

He didn't understand it and he knew that it didn't matter that he didn't understand it. He would die and she would too; when the bomb went off, it would not matter that she was ready for it.

But he was restless.

It was still early in the day. Kathryn sat on the couch, staring off into nothing, and Bane sat at the table with what felt like ever-present blueprints spread out in front of him, not looking at any of them. His fingers drummed absentmindedly on the table. He thought of leaving, of going to patrol the city, but something held him back and he learned a long time ago to trust his gut. _Wait, _something was telling him. _Wait, and let them drown in their own fear._

The bodies hanging around the borders of the city would do more to keep the obedience than he ever could.

It was then that there was a knock on the door and the mask hissed as Bane inhaled.

"Come."

The door opened and there was Barsad, his face flushed from cold. His eyes flickered from Kathryn back to Bane.

"You might want to see this," he said.

Bane looked back to Kathryn and she met his eye, raising an eyebrow so slightly that he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't known her face so well. He turned away from her again, nodded to Barsad, and followed the younger man out of the room.

Down the turning corridor of stairs and then they were in the light filled lobby. There were three men with guns being held at their backs that Bane immediately recognized; the day Kathryn had gone back to the hospital after being attacked, she'd been attacked again, by a group of four men. Three of those men stood in front of him now. His eyebrows lifted and he grasped the edges of his vest as he moved slowly towards them; they recognized him and they reeked of fear.

Not taking his eyes off of them, his mask hissed. "Did they attack someone?"

"They did," said Barsad, a strange hardness in his voice. "Tell him," he ordered the three men.

"We were just messing around-" said one of them.

"-if a cunt is stupid enough to walk around alone then she deserves what she gets-"

"-we didn't hurt her, anyway-"

Bane lifted a hand. "Tell me what happened."

Two of the men exchanged a glance, and the youngest one- still in his late twenties- began to speak.

"We saw this girl. And we- well, we just wanted to talk to her really-"

Bane said nothing but his gaze hardened and the man swallowed.

"We got close to her-"

"-you were surrounding her," said Barsad, softly, a note of disgust in his voice. The youngest man gave a helpless sort of shrug, but another one of them was staring at Bane with defiance etched in every line of his face. Bane met his gaze coolly.

"It's a new world, man," said the youngest, a plea in his voice. "I didn't think it would be such a big deal-"

" 'It'," said Bane, his eyes snapping to the speaker. "You aren't even man enough to call your intentions by their name."

"Why is it such a big deal?" said the defiant man, loudly. "People are out their killing each other. What does it matter if we rape a couple of girls?"

Bane's fist tightened on the vest as he stared down the man. He'd always viewed rape with a cool disgust; he'd seen plenty of it over his life. Talia's mother died being raped and he'd had to protect Talia herself from the same fate for the first ten years of her life. They weren't the only victims in the pit, though; not even men were safe and the only way to make oneself safe was to become completely lethal. Killing someone was one thing; there was a certain honesty in it. But rape, to Bane, was disgusting. Fellow killers were people to be respected (until they gave a reason otherwise) but rapists were things to be squashed.

"Continue," he said.

"She- well, she fought back. I guess she'd been scavenging or something, because she swung this bag around and hit Mike in the head-"

The third man, who had not spoken, had a bleary look about him, and his pupils were different sizes.

"-there were cans in it, or something. Then this- well-'

"-tell them," said Barsad. The speaker looked uncertain.

"Man, I don't even know- we all thought he was dead-"

"Who did you see?" Bane asked, his mechanical voice echoing around the empty lobby. The speaker exchanged a glance with the loud man.

"Harvey Dent," he said finally. "He knew the girl. He- he got us to back off and he was threatening us when your guys showed up. He looked rough, though- half his face is burned off and he looked like he hadn't taken a shower in a few years."

"Tell him what he called the girl."

The man's eyes flickered between Bane and Barsad.

"Brooklynne," he said, slowly. "He called her Brooklynne."

Bane's eyebrows lifted and he looked down to Barsad, who nodded.

"It's her," he said. "I shouted out her name, and she looked back and saw me. It's her."

"That's three," murmured Bane. "Where is the fourth?"

"And Harvey Dent," said Barsad, his accented voice harder. "Should we be worried about that? He was Gotham's white knight, once."

"And now he is a broken shell of a man living in the sewers. Hardly inspiring and not, I think, a cause for worry."

Bane felt an idea sparking under his skin as he regarded these three men; he wanted to see Kathryn react to something, and what better than three men who had threatened not only her, but her friend as well?

"Barsad," he said, his eyes flicking between the men. "Did you see where Harvey Dent and Brookylnne Bell escaped to?"

"It looked like the sewers."

"Take two other men. See if they left a trail- and if you find them, bring them to me alive." Barsad nodded and turned to the front of the building, his footsteps echoing, and Bane looked to one of the men behind the would-be-rapists.

"You," he said, his voice cool and very hard. "On the top floor there is a girl, and I want you to bring her here. Do not tell her why. Do not let her refuse. Do not let her get your gun. Go."

He gave a single nod and jogged past the three men and past Bane. The looks on the men's faces ranged from curious to angry.

"What are your names?" Bane asked them in a tone that could have been misconstrued as friendly.

"Randall," said the loud man shortly.

"Damien," said the man who'd done most of the speaking.

"Mike," said the last man, his voice hazy. Bane's eyes slid over the three of them and they stood in silence.

Soon quiet footsteps echoed behind them and Bane did not turned to look back at Kathryn; he didn't acknowledge her presence until she stood next to him. He looked down at her as the guard resumed his place behind Damien. She was looking at the three men with her brow furrowed slightly and slowly her arms crossed over her chest.

"I remember you," Randall said, his face twisting into a leer. "You thought you could fight us."

Bane waited for her to respond but she didn't. Her pale face was expressionless.

The mask hissed. "Do you recognize these men?"

A single nod.

"Do you remember what I told them I would do to them if they attacked another woman?"

The three started to protest and Bane silenced them with a raised hand. There was a very pregnant pause, and Kathryn nodded.

The mask hissed again as Bane drew in breath and his eyes slid to the three men. "Tell her who you attacked."

"What does it matter-"

"Tell her."

Damien's eyes moved to Kathryn's. "Some girl. Her name is Brookylnne."

He felt Kathryn tense and her eyes widened as she looked very quickly between Bane and the three men.

"Is she alright?"

"She's fine," snapped Randall. "Bitch hit Mike with a bag of cans."

Kathryn's eyes flashed with pride.

"What happens next," said Bane slowly, each word very deliberate, "is up to you."

She met his gaze silently. Her shaggy hair was pulled back but chunks of it fell into her face and for a few seconds, he was disarmed; there was still such youth in her face, such possibility, and it was cut short at the end of twenty-eight days. He forced the thoughts away.

"I will leave their fate in your hands." He was watching her face very closely but he refused to let himself think of her dying. "It is up to you whether they live or die."

There was silence.

"Why?" She asked, after what felt like a very long time.

"They attacked your friend," said Bane, his voice amiable. "It seems only fair that you should decide their fate."

_Here is the cliff, little girl. Jump._

For a moment he could have sworn she could read his mind; her eyes were measuring and calculating for a flash and then they were empty again, and Bane felt that unease creep up his spine.

"So," she said, her voice quiet. "My choices are to kill more people, or to let three rapists back on the streets."

Bane said nothing.

"It doesn't seem like there's any way for me to win."

_So she does learn._

"Please don't kill us-"

"Yeah, if your bitch of a friend hadn't been walking around on own we'd never be here fuckin' anyway-"

"Call my friend a bitch one more time," said Kathryn, her eyes flashing to Randal and her voice ringing around the lobby. "And see what happens."

Randall fell silent and her voice echoed.

"What would be the noble thing to do?" Bane asked, his voice soft and she looked up at him, her brows furrowed. "To kill them, to carry that weight in your soul and protect others from the fate you and your friend almost shared? Or to let them go because you cannot take any more guilt weighing on you?"

She just looked at him, her gaze unreadable. Bane kept his face impassive and it didn't matter that those three men were there, or that the guards stood behind them- the world had narrowed down and he and Kathryn Sherman were the only people left.

_Jump_, he thought. _Jump down to me_.

"No," she said and he sensed something within her letting go. He raised an eyebrow.

"No?"

"I won't chose," she said simply, but there was a hardness behind her eyes. "This isn't a call I need to make."

"And if I were to let them go?"

Her eyes tightened. "What they do isn't my responsibility."

"Even after they attacked your friend?"

For the first time since the revolution, she smiled. "Haven't you realized my friends don't need me to protect them? Brooke can take care of herself."

Holly Wakefield's words echoed back to him: _if you think we need to be together to be lethal, you haven't been paying attention._

"Have you given up playing the martyr?"

Her eyes flashed. "I'm responsible for my actions," she said, and Bane wasn't really sure if she was speaking to him or to herself. "Not for anyone's else's."

So she wasn't going to jump.

"You are certainly full of surprises," he told her, and then he looked to the guard standing behind Randall and nodded. Three shots rang out, and three bodies hit the ground.

Kathryn Sherman didn't blink, and she slowly drew in a deep breath as Bane looked down at her.

"Did you hope I would kill them?"

"Does it matter?" her voice was soft.

"It does to me."

The emptiness was still there but it had changed, somehow; she looked older and Bane knew that she was growing up in a way he'd forgotten young people did, she was learning from the past, from her mistakes, and she was learning to recognize manipulation when she saw it.

"Yes," she said, slowly. "I'm glad they're dead."

"And yet you did not want to kill them. Not even for your friend."

"I don't want to kill anyone else," she said, and her voice was very tired. "Not ever."

"Not even men like them?"

"It's still human life," she said quietly. "And it still… it still leaves you hollow."

He regarded her silently for a few moments, his gaze sliding over her round, drawn face, over the hair that would not stay out of her eyes.

"How you've grown," he said, his mechanical voice echoing. The guards were dragging away the bodies, but both Kathryn and Bane ignored them.

Her eyes searched his. She was silent.

He was glad that she hadn't jumped, after all.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

"Lights" by Ellie Goulding

A/N: I am uploading that at 3:30AM and I have to be up at like 9 for church what the heck is wrong with me

Not quite two weeks! There are bits of this chapter that still feel weird to me so its possible I may be editing and reuploading it later, but I also might not. It's pretty challenging to try and write fairly drastic character development from the point of view of another character who is going through a much more subtle development, ESPECIALLY when neither character involved is a reliable narrator, especially when it comes to each other. But I'm pretty proud of how it turned out; the next few chapters are very important for both plot development and character development, and both of THOSE will lead up to the romance which, yes, is still coming. I know exactly how I am getting both characters in a place to be in a romantic relationship, and I'm very excited about it.

Cant wait to hear your thoughts!

Paradisical


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